Guild Wars 2

No matter the changes, no matter the nerfs, thieve’s are destined to fail. They are impossible to balance, not bc of their dps or dodge abilities but bc stealth is over powered. And that alone brings the hatred towards thieves. No matter the nerfs or changes thieves will forever be feared. The reason is simple, there is no counter for stealth and for that people feel out of control and helpless then start crying.

Solution, add counter stealth abilities and reveals. This way when they get ninja’ed by a thief they have no one to blame but themselves.

This ofc would come as a huge nerf to thieves. Its not like stealth is readily available and can be spammed at our hearts desire so what i suggest is to give us just that.

Add a new f skill which I’m going to call “Cloak”. Cloak would work in the exact same way as stealth minus a few distinct abilities.
1. Each time it is cast you lose 3 initiative
2. Instead of regening 1 initiative a second you lose 1.
3. At 0 initiative you can remain in cloak.
4. In Cloak taking any dmg will reveal you, costing another 3 initiative to reenter(quick cooldown could be added or could not be usable while in combat, although i reckon with the initiative drain it wouldnt matter)
5. Hiding traits will not affect Cloak, eg. no healing, initiative regen or con removal, it is a seperate skill entirely.
6. I think adding a GM shadow arts or acrobatics trait that removes the -1 initiative per a second drain.
7. Atking a target ends cloak

And i think the current stealth should be more or less left alone.
And for people who will probably right off the bat saying “Cloak” would be over powered, without #6 it would mean more then likely starting a fight with 0 initiative.

To counter stealth, i reckon all professions cept Guard, Warrior, and Thief should receive abilities to counter stealth, ofc with an appropriate price.

Something like
Elementalist: Cast a spell that reveals an x radius around the caster for x duration. x cooldown.
Ranger: Have it available by having certain pets.
Mesmer: ?
Engi: Could make target appear on mini map
Necro: Could be part of deathshroud.
Item: usuable by anyone, cost karma or a pretty penny. 1sec see hidden, 5 sec cooldown.

And I’m not saying these abilities would have to be easily accessible via utility slot, they could be added to trait lines, be part of weapon sets or elites.

My point is that stealth should have a counter, and as long as people feel like sitting ducks even if thieves will only tickle them, thieves will get a bad name.

Edit:
TLDR: stealth and the lack of ways to deal with it is the reason why thieves can never be balanced. No matter how squishy or weak we are as long as people dont know how to deal with hidden thieves will never be put on par with other classes and will continue to receive nerfs. Think after a change to stealth, skills and weapon sets can be reworked to offer a more balanced thief.

No way. Mesmers and Engineers get stealth. Thief and Mesmer can spec for stealth traits. If your problem is with the thief than just say so because youre not even mentioning mesmers…

Dekk.3459:

No way. Mesmers and Engineers get stealth. Thief and Mesmer can spec for stealth traits. If your problem is with the thief than just say so because youre not even mentioning mesmers…

I have no problems with stealth, just the fact that once someone enters stealth there’s no way for another player to end it. And this is why people pick on thieves so much. Too much stealth, nothing to do about it.

eg. X class nearly kills thief, thief hides and run off. Atm you complain and its essentially “tough luck kid” which brings the blame on thieves. Where as if we had reveals of some sort, then the blame would reflect the player who let the thief escape.

MyCondolences.8172:

Dekk.3459:

No way. Mesmers and Engineers get stealth. Thief and Mesmer can spec for stealth traits. If your problem is with the thief than just say so because youre not even mentioning mesmers…

I have no problems with stealth, just the fact that once someone enters stealth there’s no way for another player to end it. And this is why people pick on thieves so much. Too much stealth, nothing to do about it.

eg. X class nearly kills thief, thief hides and run off. Atm you complain and its essentially “tough luck kid” which brings the blame on thieves. Where as if we had reveals of some sort, then the blame would reflect the player who let the thief escape.

And I think they are doing the right thing by limiting the amount of stealth you stack. Problem is with all of the AoE damage thief needs to be able to get away. Any class can make a build to severely hamper stealth based thief. They just prefer to play a build someone posts on the internet as the best build.

When the game first came out there were the profession skills and each class seemed pretty unique having a feature that made it different from the others. I mean how many people are complaining about CnD? And the usefulness of SR for preventing stomps or ressing, nope. And my impression of this balancing patch (outside of the permastealth change) is that a couple of thief builds are not liked and instead of new options they are just punishing the class in its entirety. No new options. Saying changes to initiative being better is a farce compared to the other balances.

I really think the solution to stealth stacking is in this next patch…

the thing is, even if every class had anti-stealth abilities ppl would still cry rivers about stealth

other games have such mechanics and it doesn’t stop people to cry about it

Cynz.9437:

the thing is, even if every class had anti-stealth abilities ppl would still cry rivers about stealth

other games have such mechanics and it doesn’t stop people to cry about it

Ragnarok had an interesting mechanic for Stealth.

Cloak turned you invisible and you moved the same movement speed and had access to all of your skills, however, you would be revealed instantly if an AOE hit you. Then the 2nd form of Stealth was “Hide”. While in “Hide” you would move 50% of your base speed, all skills aside from “Unhide” would be locked and you would be immune to all damage except “earth” magic.

Not saying elementalist should be the only one that can reveal, just giving a mechanic that worked really well. It balanced out fair easily and gave all classes equal opportunity to stop “cloak” while hide was more selective on how it was removed.

I know at least 1 mmo where stealth worked/works. Why new devs refuse to use that as a template and insist on their broken/QQ magnets is beyond me.

In RO, the map itself added to stealth dynamics. War maps where divided into 3: courtyards, corridors, emp rooms.
- courtyards were the wide open spaces that had towers/sniper points where defenders could “peek-a-boo” snipe the attacking armies (I say armies because it was 1 vs everybody else there – not this fixed 1v1v1). This is the part of the map where players just CHAAAAAAAAAAARGE so stealth was pretty much meaningless there and was mostly used to avoid peek-a-boo 1shotters. Also the huge amounts of space just prevented players from efficiently revealing stealth players.

- corridors where the inside of the castles consisting mostly of narrow passages serving as chokes. Stealth was more important here since the smaller spaces made it easier to reveal stealthers.

- emp rooms held the objectives (castle lord if you will). That is where stealth had to be used really smart because players would AoE the entire room if it meant revealing any stealthers. It was also because guild leaders had a skill to summon all online members to their location (huge cast time and cd). This made thief classes the optimal choice for guild leaders.

Also note, stealthers had a godly build (through gear) where they were immune to magic (majority of aoe) and 75% physical damage reduction. And yet even with that there was little QQ to stealth (hint: even stealth + god mode had a hard counter).

Seetoo.9316:

I know at least 1 mmo where stealth worked/works. Why new devs refuse to use that as a template and insist on their broken/QQ magnets is beyond me.

Well I’m not saying my idea is the best idea or even balanced/good.
But thiefs keep getting hit hard with PvE nerfs bc of how we manage in PvP. And judging from ppls comments on how poorly our builds are and how hard it is for us to do alot of things other classes do, i can only assume it has to do with our stealth abilities and the lack of ways other players have to deal with them.

I forget where I 1st read it, but someone said “Stealth is holding the thief back” and I agree. Because stealth is the way that it is now, there are so many things a thief can’t do.
- can’t contest a point
- can’t have non stealth defenses
To name some.

That is why my thief will never use stealth on purpose. At most I’ll only use become the snow leopard rush + stealth (quad pistols has no escapes)

Frankly I think the OP is wrong.

The current nerfs have very little to do with stealth and honestly, people stopped complaining about Thieves a long time ago.

While I agree that the implementation of Stealth isn’t favorable towards balancing, it’s not a big deal anymore in the context of this game.

Stealth, no matter how much even I like or hate it, does not effectively contribute to any objective available in pvp currently.
Practically, an utility mechanic that is taken overly seriously resulting the class being burdened with it rather that one utilizing it.
There is not a single main-scenario case in pvp where stealth contributes to the achieving a certain goal.
Thief is stripped of all other defenses and as such is forced into stealth. Once he starts using stealth to full extent, he is rightfully called stealth abuser. Which results in thief itself, no the stupid useless utility – stealth – being nerfed over and over and over.
If this continues, there will become time where thieves will remain with nothing but stealth in their kitten nal.
Assassins were epic in Guild Wars. Without a single hint of stealth mechanics, with mobility that would make gw2 thieves cry, with damage that was obviously meant to kill.
Here, thief is a ripoff “stealth class” of other mmo’s. With an exception that instead of letting some of the pride go and taking some readily available and working stealth mechanics, one was created from scratch to doom the class and whole game.

Engineers, mesmers, rangers, and elementalists can all go into stealth. This is stupid.