Guild Wars 2

Clearly the game designers wanted to limit stealth in this game by placing not only timers on the stealth abilities of thieves, but also by incorporating debuffs that prevent thieves from re-stealthing shortly after coming out of stealth. Recent battlegrounds have shown me that unlimited stealth has introduced a sort of imbalance in WvW battleground combat.

One thief, infinitely stealthed can hold a supply point against a force of 100 or even 250 players. Clearly this is not intended (I hope?)

There are several ways to correct this flaw. One is to fix the stacking of stealth (explained later). The second is to prevent stealthed players from preventing or contributing towards capturing a battleground point.

The “infinite stealth” is not something I’ve used, but researched. To my knowledge in includes placing a Smoke Screen (talented to reduce its recycle rate to 24sec) and then jumping through it repeatedly with Heartseeker (or supposedly cluster bomb works as well… but I’d assume damaging players would break the stealth). Each jump adds time to the stealth timer, allowing a player to stack stealth rather significantly. While I didn’t spend the time to figure out exactly how the thieves did it in my WvW match, it doesn’t really matter.

The point is, despite playing a thief, its clearly an imbalance introduced by several clever players. I would go so far to call it an exploit.

This is such an annoying exploit and can give people a huge advantage in wvw. I was alone trying to siege a sentry point and saw no one in site as far as I can see on my screen 360 degree. When my hp dipped to about 50%, a few thieves popped out of no where behind me, and it was death for me in a sec before I noticed them. For those who haven’t played a thief class yet, while in stealth, your first skill slot becomes the skill back stab and is one of the highest damaging skill.

Another thing I’ve heard is that the mesmer’s portal skill can make anyone go into stealth/invisible after going through the portal – this has something to do with the rending issue. Again- an exploit that had resulted in the lost of a siege and losing 3 siege equipment in a few sec. VERY UNBALANCED game play if anyone is using these stealth exploits.

Both of these issues are most likely the culling issue, where the game does not receive the location information of another player immediately, or when there are too many around. No one can do an attack in stealth and then not be taken out of stealth and placed on a stealth cool down where they cannot again enter stealth for a short time. No matter how much time they managed to stack such as described in scree’s post. Kinda tempted to seeing if that works though, I did not know stealth stacked time.

Will report to exploits at arenanet if I find anything that is not intentional of the game’s mechanics.

I haven’t try the infinite stealth or if it works but…Aren’t Thieves suppose to do that? Stealth, Kill, Run away…I see no issue with them being what they are…Is like telling a orange to be a car…Thieves stealth that’s what they do that’s what they will always do…There are several counter measures in every race to this…

If one thief being invis stops 250 guys, then they need to learn their AoE buttons. lol. We theives are invisible, not invincible. At the NW supply camp in Borderlands, I can drive a zerg nutty by going in and out of stealth every 20-30 seconds, because masses often panick and are easily juked. The current stealth mechanic is fine, zergs just need to get more coordinated.

Sephirox.4071:

I haven’t try the infinite stealth or if it works but…Aren’t Thieves suppose to do that? Stealth, Kill, Run away…I see no issue with them being what they are…Is like telling a orange to be a car…Thieves stealth that’s what they do that’s what they will always do…There are several counter measures in every race to this…

Thieves are not what they are when doing something that the game’s developers specifically designed thief not to do.

If they wanted thieves to have infinite stealth, they would have given them a World of Warcraft stealth button. They also would’ve made it impossible to cap things while stealthed.

I agree scree.I don’t really mind the thief stealth just that it’s very unbalanced to hit someone go back stealth hit and again and again.Attacking should break stealth thats all I ask.Saw some videos on youtube about a thief fighting in WvW like come on!He was killing more people at once going stealth and again and again.I don’t think they intended to make thief so op.Last time I checked thief was best in 1v1 not 1v100…

gamerul.2509:

I agree scree.I don’t really mind the thief stealth just that it’s very unbalanced to hit someone go back stealth hit and again and again.Attacking should break stealth thats all I ask.Saw some videos on youtube about a thief fighting in WvW like come on!He was killing more people at once going stealth and again and again.I don’t think they intended to make thief so op.Last time I checked thief was best in 1v1 not 1v100…

Thieves still cannot restealth immediately after attacking people from stealth. The debuff timer is 3 seconds..

What they can do if watching from other person’s perspective is that they used blindness which can be rather confusing a newer players as it would seem that the thief ‘disappears’.

Actually the main problem of thieves stealthing in WvW is that “player culling” prevents them from being redrawn immediately when they leave stealth, so other players are effectively being attacked by a still invisible thief (their perspective not the thief’s) without being able to see the thief and respond or defend themselves.
Until ANet resolves or mitigates “player culling” this will continue to be an ongoing issue with stealth based thieves.

So anyone who are not a thief just use aoe button, yes? How can you aoe the target that you dont know where it is? The last seen position? Its not wowlike slower if stealthed, but faster than ever when stealthed… and when its comes out for 1 skill (you dont see it just the bullets, but tab can select the thief, if its not select one of 100 other enemy near you) , you hit them to half hp, stealth again and when its comes for next hit its already healed to full hp all the time. Try to root, slow but never works. 1 way works 10 man with aoe every cm in 1 km range, or if you can stun (and another 3 time until you kill). And someone can show me a character (any kind) what can win 1v1 against a stealth based thief? I know… Another thief…