Guild Wars 2

Thief trait VII of Shadow Arts trait line “Stealing grants 2 seconds of stealth”.

I haven’t been able to get this to work with pistol mainhand. After stealing, stealth is granted, but a single shot is fired which breaks stealth. I should be stealthed and able to use Sneak Attack, the pistol stealth move.

Otherwise, this trait works with all the other weapons.

Has anyone else found this?

this is broken because #1 autoattack happens and the “hidden thief” is not at all useful…

please fix this…

it can’t take much.

so you go STEALTH and then immediately attack and dont get the benefits because you dont have a choice on the AUTO attack

BUMP*!

While using the Shadow Arts perk “Hidden Thief” (stealth for 2 secs after stealing) and a main hand pistol, you enter combat, fire a shot while shadow stepping which does damage as you stealth, causing you to leave stealth and not be able to get the bonus damage for Sneak Attack.

Ideally, this perk should make you shadow step, stealth next to them, and be able to Sneak Attack. This bug is a significant disadvantage to the p/d bleed thief playstyle.

There is a bug with “Hidden Thief” Trait/Talent (Tier 2 Shadow Arts) when you have a pistol as your MH weapon.

If you have adagger in MH this talent works perfectly (i.e. it stealths you and turns off your auto attack and provides you with an ability to do a backstab on “1”).

If you have a pistol MH it stealths you BUT then auto attacks immediately meaning you lose stealth and also it does not proc the Thief stealth pistol “1” skill “Sneak Attack” it simply does a standard auto attack.

You can replicate this bug at any time on training golems in the mists to test it

Im not sure if thats the case, but most likely you break steal’s stealth with auto attack because you use steal while already shooting.

Steal is instant cast and it doesnt cancel the animation of the skill you were using before Steal. Since pistol auto attack has a significant cast time its highly possible that you just use Steal during your auto attack, gain stealth, then finish your auto attack immediately losing stealth.

Its only possible to avoid that by removing auto attack and avoiding to use Steal during casting any other skill.

Yeah this was a big shock when I switched to a P/D, condition damage build the other day. I’d like to know if this is intentional design and we just have to adapt to disabling auto attack before we steal with Hidden Thief, or if ArenaNet is going to approach it like it is a bug and try to fix it.

@Lexander – just tested this with MH dagger and even if you are in combat and hence dagger MH autoattack is ‘active’ it still turns it off when you steal (which allows for the well timed backstab)

So I guess my point is that this talent produces inconsistent outputs across weapons MH dagger and MH pistol (and I have not tested Shortbow). Regardless of turning off the autoattack it should proc sneak attack, but does not

This is why I think it must be a bug and not working as intended….

I also think it is a bug. Already reported it a time ago, in fact.

The trait “Hidden thief” under shadow arts for thieves is bugged, its meant to grant stealth when using steal, which it does for MH sword/dagger but not for MH pistol or shortbow or rather, it applies the stealth but we then instantly lose it due to an involuntary auto-attack which does not occur with swords or daggers.

the only way to stop this is disabling auto-attacks which is just annoying, i’ve done some snooping and this is not a new bug, its atleast 3 months old and its still not fixed despite making the trait utterly useless for anyone wishing to use MH pistol or shortbow.

ps. this is not caused by arrows/bullets still traveling when using the steal ability as it occurs even if you start the engagement with steal.

This is still happening. Any official word on it?

I want to say, I noticed something else – when stealing, even dagger and sword would hit the target at times, especially when my target ends up in front of me. If I run through my target, the animation plays, but the autoattack misses, so it doesn’t break stealth. But if I don’t, there is a chance that I waste my stealth by an involuntary attack as stated above.

Personally, I wouldn’t have a problem with the trait being melee only, if that was written in the description, but the fact that it sometimes backfires with melee weapons makes me agree with the fact that it probably is a bug.

I have also noticed this bug when trying to include this trait in my pistol build.

The steal triggers an auto attack on pistol so stealth is not granted / broken.

Simple fix just turn off Auto attack in your settings.
All classed have this little bug or is it if all classes have this with a certain weapon selection.

That’s not a fix, that’s a cumbersome workaround. ANet is supposed to do the fixing.

Besides, the OP mentioned the same thing in his second sentence….

Most logical thing will be to get the autoattack automatically stopped like other skills do.

That is a good patch for a player to employ until there is a real fix, but you guys should offer a better solution. If the goal of the trait is to grant Stealth when people Steal, then it should cut off Auto Attack when it goes into effect. Players should not have to disable a very useful UI function just to make the trait not fail.

Also, that would mean that something else is off if the shot fired after stealing is not a sneak attack.

the order of effects currently is
steal → shot animation started → stealth→ shot connects → stealth broken

and not
steal → stealth gained → sneak attack shot → stealth broken

The issues probably are connected, I just wanted to point out that projectiles already travelling/animations already started seemingly can be an issue with stealth.

Sorry if there is a topic related to this already, I didn’t see anything titled that looked related on the first 4 pages. I have noticed a bug related to this talent involving a gun in the main hand. For some odd reason when you steal you stealth and then immediately break it by starting to shoot but not gaining the stealth bonus combat ability from the first combat ability.

I have tested this both in and out of combat by not pressing any button but steal and the result is always the same and you end up shooting just as you stealth. With dagger or sword in the main hand you gain stealth and don’t initiated combat unless you hit another button. With a gun however you immediately start shooting and you don’t gain the extra stealth combat ability benefit from the first combat ability.

I haven’t tested this with underwater weapons or short bow, so I don’t know if it carries over to any of those.

This is a massive problem with the thief at the moment and it is not just limited to this trait.

It also occurs when you are shooting the pistol and use blinding powder, shadow refuge etc. Anything that stealths you instantly.

It’s down to the fact your bullets hit the target after you cloak and it counts as a hit which causes u to uncloak.

wintermute.4096:

Also, that would mean that something else is off if the shot fired after stealing is not a sneak attack.

the order of effects currently is
steal -> shot animation started -> stealth-> shot connects -> stealth broken

and not
steal -> stealth gained -> sneak attack shot -> stealth broken

The issues probably are connected, I just wanted to point out that projectiles already travelling/animations already started seemingly can be an issue with stealth.

This is still an issue, I ended up taking it out of my trait build because it just doesn’t work as it should. The fact that I did a google search and it lead me to this thread with these statements doesn’t surprise me as it was something I’d already determined.

What did surprise me was the official response to this bug. Every other stealth skill cancels the auto attack, which you then have to initiate again.

EDIT: I just wanted to make it clear I support what wintermute said in addition to what I said. That is you don’t get the attack from stealth, which you should.

This still isn’t fixed. But now I can buy new hair colors. Yay…