Guild Wars 2

Now week answers from the developers. As long as there is a possibility I would like to hear the reason.

• Why in spvp 4 sec revealed?

In www it have sense because culling effect. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Culling
But in spvp not logical nerf. It destroy 3 set of thief weapon d / d, p / d, s / d (now just 333 spam).

Problem with permastealth only with one trait. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Infusion_of_Shadow
Add 5 sec cooldown. And complain about stealth will disappear.
Trait too strong even when compared with other iniregen traits.

Thanks in advance for feedback.

Do a search on the sPVP forum regarding this change. It has been discussed to death in previous threads. The community has moved on and adapted.

Edit: Not sure what’s wrong with the search function on the forum (I was going to link you some of the threads). Either it’s broken or Anet deleted the many topics after the nerf.

Kharr.5746:

Do a search on the sPVP forum regarding this change. It has been discussed to death in previous threads. The community has moved on and adapted.

No.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Bring-back-3-sec-revealed/first
Nothing constructive there.

On the other hand, I can not even train because in Heart of the Mists 3 sec revealed.

4s reveal isn’t degrading S/D to 3 spam.
Nor is it discouraging D/D or D/P.
To be frank I like it.

shimmerless.4560:

yeah i don’t really see how this affects d/d to be honest

But so it is. d / d thieves practically disappeared after that pointless nerf.

Marduh.4603:

shimmerless.4560:

yeah i don’t really see how this affects d/d to be honest

But so it is. d / d thieves practically disappeared after that pointless nerf.

D/D was already on the decline since December. It continued with the 4s reveal.
When Trickshot and Mug was nerfed, that’s when it dropped heavily. In the reveal nerf they nerfed quickness simultaneously so most just dropped more so to Sin signet D/P if they were still playing D/D or S/P outside of a committed few.. The nerfs that came in April just made is less desirable when the revamped S/D was the ‘new’ toy to play with.

Marduh.4603:

shimmerless.4560:

yeah i don’t really see how this affects d/d to be honest

But so it is. d / d thieves practically disappeared after that pointless nerf.

they disappeared after culling “fix”.

Well I do not know how they feel other d/d or s/d thieves, but the p/d lost a quarter of DPS.

The 4s revealed does not negatively effect really any builds atm. I think what really bothers some of the people that made these threads is that they changed revealed without really a reason for it. Stealth spam was not a huge problem back then in sPvP, it was, and still is a very relevant issue in WvW. Which makes absolutely no sense why they would revert it for WvW, and not sPvP.

There are some thieves that choose a playstyle of spamming stealth every time revealed is off cooldown. Depending on their build, they remove conditions, heal, gain initiative, and have access to backstab when they do this. Ontop of all that they get to delay the fight, allowing them to survive while they wait for health/initiative/cooldowns.

This is a problem because there is no way to ‘counter’ someone going into stealth. There’s no way for me to knock someone out of stealth. I have to wait. When I use avoidance cooldowns (dodges, evades, blocks, blinds) it’s essentially like avoiding an auto attack because the thief takes no penalty to not landing his backstab (no loss of stealth, no initiative loss). The worst part is if he misses all his backstabs and runs out of stealth, he doesn’t even get revealed, and can immediately restealth. This is absolutely up there with spirit rangers, necros, and s/d thieves as one of the worst playstyles this game has.

As a ranger, my only option is to take a pet with CC and precast the CC (because it takes so long for the pet to actually do the CC), hope he doesn’t blind field ontop of my pet, and land the CC after blind field but before heartseeker. This stops the stealth for a brief period. At the same time, he can just do blackpowder again and stealth if he has enough initiative, or use a different means of stealthing.

What’s even worse about stealth spamming is the fact that thieves can have the utility ‘shadow trap’ and can literally stealth spam around a point, laying down shadow trap anywhere, run away, and it’s basically a free backcap unless someone is standing on the point the entire game.

I just don’t know what I can do against this as a backpoint player for my team. It’s quite possibly the most frustrating thing to go against. So yes, I think the way thieves are currently, even a 4s timer on revealed is ridiculously low.

shimmerless.4560:

i think d/d fell off more because people realized if you’re gonna run d/x it’s tempting to get the benefits of SA and the blind field from d/p over the harder hitting but less reliable cnd. plus with d/p you get that interrupt over dancing dagger. (i don’t think DD is as bad as it’s made out to be but it is less useful than the daze in my experience)

People switched over from 25/30/0/0/15 D/D to 25/30/0/0/15 D/P a long time ago for the safestomps, headshots on res signet (power necro was large at the time) and the safer stealth setups, not because they needed SA benefits. When most of the D/P and D/D burst was nerfed it stopped being viable to sit on a point, so a few players went into SA, but most of them just went into acrobatics.

D/D is currently trash and completely unplayable at the moment for a number of reasons. Dancing dagger is trash, death blossom costs too much initiative to use even for evading purposes, which limits the weapon set to a poor version of D/P burst that can’t even safestomp the people it downs.

This is a problem because there is no way to ‘counter’ someone going into stealth. There’s no way for me to knock someone out of stealth.

You’ve played guardian and ranger, both of which have easy ways to prevent the standard D/P setup from completing a heartseeker.

There’s a way to counter someone going into stealth, CC them when they press 6, and if they get the heartseeker off anyways, just note where its going and cleave the kitten out of the point. If you immobed or CC’d them properly, they’ll only get 1 leap finisher in their field, meaning the stealth costed 7 initiative and you got free cleave off. Do it again and you’ve won the fight.

Concussion shot, pet cc, shield 5, sanc on the powder, fear mark or spectral wall, updraft, eq to the edge of circle, shocking aura, skull crack, headshot, mesmer gs5, diversion are all common counters.

Refuge has its own counters, many of which overlap the skills above.

Shadow trap, by contrast, is broken as kitten in its current form.

D/P isn’t really affected at all by 4 second reveal.
Whatever was left of offhand dagger gets destroyed by it, however.

Marduh.4603:

shimmerless.4560:

yeah i don’t really see how this affects d/d to be honest

But so it is. d / d thieves practically disappeared after that pointless nerf.

D/D disappeared because dancing dagger got nerfed into the ground and Cloak and Dagger is a very expensive stealth with no utility. The pistol offhand is a much more useful weaponset sinc eit provides stealth at a range, pusling blind field, and 1/4s interrupt (at low cost). Until/unless Dancing dagger gets a complete rework or is restored to it’s original damage/cripple duration, dagger offhand is trash for dagger mainhand.

Archer Henchman.2534:

This is a problem because there is no way to ‘counter’ someone going into stealth. There’s no way for me to knock someone out of stealth.

You’ve played guardian and ranger, both of which have easy ways to prevent the standard D/P setup from completing a heartseeker.

There’s a way to counter someone going into stealth, CC them when they press 6, and if they get the heartseeker off anyways, just note where its going and cleave the kitten out of the point. If you immobed or CC’d them properly, they’ll only get 1 leap finisher in their field, meaning the stealth costed 7 initiative and you got free cleave off. Do it again and you’ve won the fight.

Concussion shot, pet cc, shield 5, sanc on the powder, fear mark or spectral wall, updraft, eq to the edge of circle, shocking aura, skull crack, headshot, mesmer gs5, diversion are all common counters.

Refuge has its own counters, many of which overlap the skills above.

Shadow trap, by contrast, is broken as kitten in its current form.

Concussion shot doesn’t last long enough. Pet CC needs to be done ahead of time (and is incredibly unreliable for this, but if you really are going to insist this is an easy way to prevent stealth I would like to see you consistently do it with just pet CC). Either way, you can just blind field ontop of the pet, or blindfield ontop of the ranger, and you won’t be able to be stopped because everything the ranger does is blinded until it’s over.

Shield 5 on guardian, sure, if they’re not dropping blinding powder on top of you (which would constantly blind you, which blinds the shield 5). Sanctuary on the powder, well since this has a 1 1/2s cast time, this is not a viable solution. It’s also able to be blinded (which allows the enemy to sit in it for a little, meaning they can avoid the initial knockback), and blowing a 120s cooldown to stop a skill that has no cooldown is completely unrealistic. It’s obvious that you’re just getting desperate now.

Refuge I don’t have an issue with because you can’t spam it every 4 seconds, and you can actually do something about it unless the thief is running something like s/d where they have almost infinite evades.

CnD is critting for 4k on my thief in wvw in addition to applyign vuln and 4 secs of stealth.

The only reason thieves switched to D/P is because nobody can evade your stealth attempt on it, you’ve got an OP blind field to shut down melee and guaranteed stomps, and you’ve got a spammable fast cast ranged interrupt.

D/D isn’t bad, D/P is just soooo much better.

It’s like saying mesmer offhand sword is bad because of offhand pistol. Offhand sword is good, but offhand pistol is just better.

That’s what happens when you get overlapping roles on weaponsets. Both offhand pistol and dagger grant stealth, so they’re bound to compete for the same niche.

shimmerless.4560:

the offsword/pistol comparison is sort of true i was talking with a friend about this, the difference is there are situations where sword shines (vs melee) and with d/d vs d/p it’s not really that kind of contrast.

wvw is a completely different ballgame there’s no damage cap so things can get really crazy.

There is a contrast if you’re fighting classes with pets, it’s basically free CND because pets are kittened and can’t/don’t dodge cnd and cnd for the purposes of gaining stealth is cheaper in initiative than black powder>HS and is harder to interrupt as is faster than a global on BS then a global on HS.

Dancing dagger is also a very good group aoe cripple and on targets trying to rez you can just from a distance spam a couple of bouncing daggers on 2-3 people and it’s noticeable pressure for a dagger mainhand set. It’s good for chasing too as it’s cheaper than shadow shot and affects multiple targets.

And of course for P/D builds, which may not be present in tournies but are plenty viable for just killing people in hotjoins.

It just so happens that an aoe moderate damage+ cripple and a bursty stealth granting ability that can be dodged is the less desirable of the utilities versus a blind field that combos for stealth, stomps, and shut downs melee in addition to a ranged interrupt.

Also Leaping Death Blossom is a dead skill on a d/d set as the condi build is a gimmick as you’ve only got LDB for the condi build while the rest of the skills, just like with rangers and warrior sword weapons are hybridized weapons, and hybridized weapons suck. Weapons should be dedicated, because the current design of stats playing a huge role on numbers means that you have to fully commit and hybrid builds/skills are left out in the cold in terms of scaling.

1 condi skill on a weaponset with 4 power scaling skills is just bad.

Stealth is broken is simple as that.

If you don’t see how 4s revealed kills d/d then your obviously not a thief.

4s reveal is dumb and should be reverted.

Wvw has 3s reveal, why not spvp? D/ and s/d stealth builds are killed because they don’t have enough defense to deal with beeing vulnerable for 4s. D/p on the other hand had a blind field to save you. S/d now has flanking strike. D/d has nothing. It’s the least used set in spvp by top players because it has no defense at all. The cnd to steal combo is not worth giving up blind field. With 3s reveal it might be worth it.

4s needs to go. People qq about 4s reveal when necros exist? Lol!

Stealth builds in sPvP are pretty much useless, no reason to have 4 sec revealed there at all.

I’m surprised the reveal isn’t for 9 seconds.

The thing I find most annoying about a thief fight isn’t that they’ll beat me, but that it isn’t a “fight”. Their combat strategy is the following:

1: hide in stealth
2: ambush someone from behind, hit them with everything you have
3: dodge a few times to avoid their counter attack
4: pop back in stealth

repeat. There is no hard counters to stealth, and most of what is done while fighting a thief (an extremely mobile class with multiple teleports on the same build) is just guessing. Heck, the only way you can be sure anything is accomplished is if you use Necromancer Marks and see them triggering it.

I do wish that stealth in the game had more diversity to it. I think that if a player in stealth gets hit 0.5 seconds after entering stealth, it should immediately drop them out of stealth. I’m pretty sure a warrior knows when he has buried his axe into someone instead of just flinging wildly into thin air. This makes stealth tactical: instead of being an omni shield that lets you lay down offense, it functions as an escape or an offensive tactic that can be countered if the opponent guesses where you are and attacks there. The approach to backstab will take skill, instead of relying on one of many gap closing abilities.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I’m surprised the reveal isn’t for 9 seconds.

Says necromancer, who can fearchain to death all glasscannon.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I’m surprised the reveal isn’t for 9 seconds.

The thing I find most annoying about a thief fight isn’t that they’ll beat me, but that it isn’t a “fight”. Their combat strategy is the following:

1: hide in stealth
2: ambush someone from behind, hit them with everything you have
3: dodge a few times to avoid their counter attack
4: pop back in stealth

repeat. There is no hard counters to stealth, and most of what is done while fighting a thief (an extremely mobile class with multiple teleports on the same build) is just guessing. Heck, the only way you can be sure anything is accomplished is if you use Necromancer Marks and see them triggering it.

I do wish that stealth in the game had more diversity to it. I think that if a player in stealth gets hit 0.5 seconds after entering stealth, it should immediately drop them out of stealth. I’m pretty sure a warrior knows when he has buried his axe into someone instead of just flinging wildly into thin air. This makes stealth tactical: instead of being an omni shield that lets you lay down offense, it functions as an escape or an offensive tactic that can be countered if the opponent guesses where you are and attacks there. The approach to backstab will take skill, instead of relying on one of many gap closing abilities.

It’s not 9 seconds because Sword/Dagger and Pistol/Dagger exist. They made half the stealth sets need to use their stealth skill a lot to be dangerous (ignoring LS, it wasn’t in the original design) while the other two hit so hard that they can lean more toward long stealths.

Jumper.9482:

D/P isn’t really affected at all by 4 second reveal.
Whatever was left of offhand dagger gets destroyed by it, however.

D/P is significantly affected by the 4 seconds of reveal, which forces a dodge or extra attack between every restealth rotation that the thief does while S/D rarely has issues with their disengagement or pressure because of reveal. If this was the pre-buff S/D that relied on chain 3s daze, then sure, but that doesn’t exist anymore. I’m not sure what you’re getting at.

Follidus.8027:

Concussion shot doesn’t last long enough. Pet CC needs to be done ahead of time (and is incredibly unreliable for this, but if you really are going to insist this is an easy way to prevent stealth I would like to see you consistently do it with just pet CC). Either way, you can just blind field ontop of the pet, or blindfield ontop of the ranger, and you won’t be able to be stopped because everything the ranger does is blinded until it’s over.

Shield 5 on guardian, sure, if they’re not dropping blinding powder on top of you (which would constantly blind you, which blinds the shield 5). Sanctuary on the powder, well since this has a 1 1/2s cast time, this is not a viable solution. It’s also able to be blinded (which allows the enemy to sit in it for a little, meaning they can avoid the initial knockback), and blowing a 120s cooldown to stop a skill that has no cooldown is completely unrealistic. It’s obvious that you’re just getting desperate now.

Refuge I don’t have an issue with because you can’t spam it every 4 seconds, and you can actually do something about it unless the thief is running something like s/d where they have almost infinite evades.

Its pretty easy to figure out when a blackpowder is coming. If you concuss a thief as he’s coming down from powder in the middle of a fight, he won’t be using the short HS, and he’ll be far enough away from the powder that he’ll have to perform a hs back into powder at max range. Any movement impairing CC that your team follows up with gives you a kill, and even if you don’t, he gets 1 application of stealth for the cost of 10-12 initiative, and sadly most thieves aren’t running at full initiative if they’re trying to disengage, otherwise they’ve done kitten-all for damage after their opener. If he’s running 10/30/30/0/0, he has to blow 2 utilities or refuge to stealth, if he’s running 10/30/x/x/30, then he can restealth, but he won’t have any initiative after his opener, and won’t be able to escape. Similarly, you can chain your concuss into a kd into a fear.

BP and HS have a combined cast time of 1.25 seconds. If your team knows that shadow step is down and you’ve just trained the thief, its pretty predictable what his only way of getting out is. A number of teams used to use sanc offensively to isolate thieves when step was down, because the only way to miss the sanc is to place it behind him and force the thief to HS into your cleave, which also gives you a free kill, but most of the guardians who used to do it have quit, and most of the new maps don’t have very good spots for it. Khylo and forest have really solid spots for it. But sanc’s really just the first of many options; Ring and Line of warding both work, and both of them are worth blowing a utility to get the blind off and a dodge roll in order to get a kill, believe me. Shield’s still got its mojo, banish works, binding blade, etc.

And those are 1 class solutions from 1 player. You know very well that when a team sends 2/3 people after a thief that he can’t blackpowder hs safely without blowing step or refuge.

So yes, there are plenty of solutions to stealth. If there weren’t, people would have been running a bunch of D/P thieves, which do exceptionally well against both necros and S/D thieves. Sadly, they get kittening demolished when 2 people with CCs decide that they’re going to burn his step then switch back to him next time he comes in.

Marduh.4603:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I’m surprised the reveal isn’t for 9 seconds.

Says necromancer, who can fearchain to death all glasscannon.

This is horribly shallow. In sPVP I play Engineer, Thief, Necromancer, Guardian, and Mesmer. I main the Engineer in sPVP myself.

Marduh.4603:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I’m surprised the reveal isn’t for 9 seconds.

Says necromancer, who can fearchain to death all glasscannon.

Every 45 seconds. Backstab’s every 4 seconds

Archer Henchman.2534:

Its pretty easy to figure out when a blackpowder is coming. If you concuss a thief as he’s coming down from powder in the middle of a fight, he won’t be using the short HS, and he’ll be far enough away from the powder that he’ll have to perform a hs back into powder at max range. Any movement impairing CC that your team follows up with gives you a kill, and even if you don’t, he gets 1 application of stealth for the cost of 10-12 initiative, and sadly most thieves aren’t running at full initiative if they’re trying to disengage, otherwise they’ve done kitten-all for damage after their opener. If he’s running 10/30/30/0/0, he has to blow 2 utilities or refuge to stealth, if he’s running 10/30/x/x/30, then he can restealth, but he won’t have any initiative after his opener, and won’t be able to escape. Similarly, you can chain your concuss into a kd into a fear.

BP and HS have a combined cast time of 1.25 seconds. If your team knows that shadow step is down and you’ve just trained the thief, its pretty predictable what his only way of getting out is. A number of teams used to use sanc offensively to isolate thieves when step was down, because the only way to miss the sanc is to place it behind him and force the thief to HS into your cleave, which also gives you a free kill, but most of the guardians who used to do it have quit, and most of the new maps don’t have very good spots for it. Khylo and forest have really solid spots for it. But sanc’s really just the first of many options; Ring and Line of warding both work, and both of them are worth blowing a utility to get the blind off and a dodge roll in order to get a kill, believe me. Shield’s still got its mojo, banish works, binding blade, etc.

And those are 1 class solutions from 1 player. You know very well that when a team sends 2/3 people after a thief that he can’t blackpowder hs safely without blowing step or refuge.

So yes, there are plenty of solutions to stealth. If there weren’t, people would have been running a bunch of D/P thieves, which do exceptionally well against both necros and S/D thieves. Sadly, they get kittening demolished when 2 people with CCs decide that they’re going to burn his step then switch back to him next time he comes in.

You’re obviously not getting what I’m talking about. I’m not talking about how good/bad a backstab thief is in team fights, I’m talking about 1v1s. Specifically, thieves that revolve their build around stealth spamming, shadow trap, and getting free neutraliziations on your backpoint.

But either way, I would like to see you reliably interrupt a blackpowder > heartseeker on someone that does it ontop of you, or maybe out of LOS. Since it’s so easy and all. Because all it sounds like you do is try to spam CC when revealed is off cooldown. That’s not the same thing at all.

And seriously, saying to use things like sanctuary and banish to interrupt a blackpowder > heartseeker? I’m done, because this won’t get anywhere. It’s also funny that you say “most of the guardians that used to do it quit,” very subtle there.

Follidus.8027:

Archer Henchman.2534:

Its pretty easy to figure out when a blackpowder is coming. If you concuss a thief as he’s coming down from powder in the middle of a fight, he won’t be using the short HS, and he’ll be far enough away from the powder that he’ll have to perform a hs back into powder at max range. Any movement impairing CC that your team follows up with gives you a kill, and even if you don’t, he gets 1 application of stealth for the cost of 10-12 initiative, and sadly most thieves aren’t running at full initiative if they’re trying to disengage, otherwise they’ve done kitten-all for damage after their opener. If he’s running 10/30/30/0/0, he has to blow 2 utilities or refuge to stealth, if he’s running 10/30/x/x/30, then he can restealth, but he won’t have any initiative after his opener, and won’t be able to escape. Similarly, you can chain your concuss into a kd into a fear.

BP and HS have a combined cast time of 1.25 seconds. If your team knows that shadow step is down and you’ve just trained the thief, its pretty predictable what his only way of getting out is. A number of teams used to use sanc offensively to isolate thieves when step was down, because the only way to miss the sanc is to place it behind him and force the thief to HS into your cleave, which also gives you a free kill, but most of the guardians who used to do it have quit, and most of the new maps don’t have very good spots for it. Khylo and forest have really solid spots for it. But sanc’s really just the first of many options; Ring and Line of warding both work, and both of them are worth blowing a utility to get the blind off and a dodge roll in order to get a kill, believe me. Shield’s still got its mojo, banish works, binding blade, etc.

And those are 1 class solutions from 1 player. You know very well that when a team sends 2/3 people after a thief that he can’t blackpowder hs safely without blowing step or refuge.

So yes, there are plenty of solutions to stealth. If there weren’t, people would have been running a bunch of D/P thieves, which do exceptionally well against both necros and S/D thieves. Sadly, they get kittening demolished when 2 people with CCs decide that they’re going to burn his step then switch back to him next time he comes in.

You’re obviously not getting what I’m talking about. I’m not talking about how good/bad a backstab thief is in team fights, I’m talking about 1v1s. Specifically, thieves that revolve their build around stealth spamming, shadow trap, and getting free neutraliziations on your backpoint.

But either way, I would like to see you reliably interrupt a blackpowder > heartseeker on someone that does it ontop of you, or maybe out of LOS. Since it’s so easy and all. Because all it sounds like you do is try to spam CC when revealed is off cooldown. That’s not the same thing at all.

And seriously, saying to use things like sanctuary and banish to interrupt a blackpowder > heartseeker? I’m done, because this won’t get anywhere. It’s also funny that you say “most of the guardians that used to do it quit,” very subtle there.

Its not about ‘spamming cc when revealed is off’. If you watch the blackpowder animation, you’ll notice that before the shot is fired, there’s a very noticeable animation where the thief gestures and lifts his pistol. There’s no such animation for shadow or headshot. If you’re attempting to react after the BP is already fired, you’ve got .75 seconds to react. If you’re watching for the pistol hand, you have an additional half second to reliably CC. If the thief is sitting on you, watching for that will tell you EXACTLY when you need to dodge to avoid the blind + field + the timing for concussive shot.

If you’re running spirits, you probably know that Spirits + Pet + Player make it incredibly obnoxious to get multiple stealths off from a single black powder, which is important for initiative regen. If the thief isn’t running 30 in SA, he won’t win the battle of attrition either, and if he is and is stealthing near your point while you sit on it and its capped because he is 30 in SA, you’re winning.

What you’re probably ACTUALLY kitten ed off by is the fact that the thief can just straight up disengage after 1) getting a free decap via shadow trap, 2)burning time until shadow trap is back up and keeping you on backpoint, 3) putting shadow trap back up and then disengaging. I have the same issues with shadow trap there that you do, but to say thakittens because of D/P’s disengage or ability to 1v1 vs a backpoint ranger is absurd.

ensoriki.5789:

4s reveal isn’t degrading S/D to 3 spam.
Nor is it discouraging D/D or D/P.
To be frank I like it.

I wont be satisfied until its 48s reveal timer.
And auto kills the thief upon attempted use.

would be cool if they never go out of stealth even when hiting
and the only to kill em to be aoe this will makes thieves viable

And yet, why?