Guild Wars 2

Sebrent.3625:

Then run into a single smart necro with that boon-ladened elementalist/guardian and watch yourself die :-p

There are some hard-counters in the game. People need to realize what they are and tweak their build to not be hard-countered if they want to avoid that. Otherwise, they need to accept that they will be stomped a majority of the time by that hard-counter.

It’s like a condition heavy build with no condition removal facing a necro with 1+ ways to transfer conditions. You’re likely to kill yourself with your own conditions. Hard countered unless you can cleanse yourself to counter those transfers and still stay ahead on damage/healing.

I think I ran into something like that last night. I don’t know what they all were. What I do know is there was 3 of them and I was immobilized the whole time stuck in a pile of AoEs and necro wells.

If they made Golems defensive they’d have to make them effective against foot soldiers. Sounds scary.

Possibly a good reason thieves’ stealth hasn’t been nerf, is their presence in a large scale battle has never changed the outcome of a battle. Which is also why Ele’s and Mesmers have been nerfed, being able to perform amazing feats like portal bombing, aoe area control and actually blocking treb fire.
When Anet created theif, they created the only class in the game that has no passive guard. A class that has to actively avoid all damage. To make this manageable they equipped them with an illusion to keep as much damage focus off them as possible. On top of that they worked this stealth illusion deeply into their offenses. Thus you have a class is dependent on stealth for defense and attack.
On top of that they removed the thief class’ traditional primary target. The support healer. Traditionally a party’s backbone was the healer and if the healer died, their party fell soon after. Thief’s role was to take them out so the party would would fall. That was Thief’s big impact. However now everyone’s their own support, Thief has lost their target, their role and their way to make a big impact.

Anet knows all this, how they’re dependent on stealth, and how they don’t make a significant impact on big battles in WvW. This is probably why Anet hasn’t touched stealth.

Deadcell.9052:

Riselight.3695:

Dual.8953:

Riselight.3695:

What I would like to see changed:
-Decreased movement speed when stealthed.
-Longer stealth CD times and/or shorter stealth duration times and/or longer revealed buff.
-A skill that can detect stealthed players, and give revealed buff.

So you want Pistol/Dagger and Sword/Dagger to be rendered worthless so all thieves will be forced to run Dagger mainhand heartseeker spamming builds?

I believe there are no P/D or S/D thieves anyway. The only Thieves I see are using dual dagger or Shortbow

No S/P or P/P anymore either, D/D and D/P are usually all I see also, there is to much incentive to playing D/D. And nothing annoys me more in this game than watching bad thieves spam heartseeker all day, I will chase these buggers down for days on my Necro just to watch them die LOL.

I am an S/D thief, but admittedly the only one I’ve seen. I’ve run into a few P/D and have one in my guild, but yeah, 90% of thieves I see are D/D or D/P backstabbers. I’d say it goes D/D, D/P, P/D, S/D, S/P, P/P which is also the distribution of thief complaints. I think I’ve only ever seen one S/D complaint ever and S/P dropped off the map after the Pistol Whip nerf.

@Svarty: From what I’ve seen Whirlwind Attack do, I wouldn’t be surprised it some Warriors have very high kill record. I can imagine if they used it in the middle of a zerg they could down 6 people.

Theftwind: I’m curious how this would work. Particularly how it’d work for S/D and how you’d keep S/D on equal ground with S/P.

These idea’s would make my current support build insanely good. I wonder if there’s such a thing as too much support.

Xsorus.2507:

style.6173:

Columba.9730:

Daeqar.8965:

Columba.9730:

Where does it say that only thieves are allowed to solo?

Secondly, if Spvp and WvWvW are the same, how about we balance thieves in WvWvW the same way they are balanced in Spvp?

No where, and there’s lots of people that run around with D/D Ele, GS Warr, Mesmer, and even some Necros and bunker troll Guardian builds and the like running around solo looking for 1v1 targets. And lots of them have great success with it and particularly look for Thieves to single out. I even saw a Ranger doing it last night who was shockingly good, although I’m not entirely sure he wasn’t cheating because I saw him using abilities of sorts that were completely new to me.

The thing is, most other classes have lots of good teamplay options to build for – and they use them. Why would they setup for dueling instead of setup to actually win? Thieves don’t have much of an option because small scale is literally the only thing the class is good at – the only thing that makes them special. They are deliberately designed to be lacking in other areas as a trade-off. The only logical thing left to do is scrounge for small scale tasks in WvW that are helpful and just be really good at them, no matter how limited those tasks may be.

Thieves do fine in Zerg vs Zerg. What you wrote isn’t accurate.

Lol. Thieves are the weakest zerg class. Name one class that is weaker. Go ahead, really. Waiting…. Waiting.. The correct answer is none. Thanks for playing though.

Ranger

Kidding right? They can get so many evades, heals and other survival tricks and still have more AoE then Thieves.
Dem water fields are glorious.

Amins.3710:

Dual.8953:

Amins.3710:

snip

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And what I think is the most ~ridiculous~ comment within your stated opinion is the fact that you think that being out of stealth for 20s renders your the dagger as an OFFHAND weapon, compeltely worthless…

Says sooo much about thieves defending stealth.

Have you seen what P/D and S/D have to work with?
I’ll start with P/D. Most common used skills in all P/D builds Sneak Attack and Cloak and Dagger.
Why 1S# Sneak Attack? So P/D users can stack as much bleeding as possible.
Why 5# Cloak and Dagger? Because Sneak Attack can only be activated through stealth.
Why don’t they rely on 1# Vital Shot? The damage and conditions are pathetic.
Why don’t they rely on 2# Body Shot? It’s damage is so low it’s not even worth the 3 initiative it costs to fire it.
Why don’t they rely on 3# Shadow Strike? It’s a melee range average damage escape skill. Only good as a space maker skill.
Why don’t they rely on 4# Dancing Dagger? Damage is too low to be an effective damage skill, it’s only good for crippling fleeing opponents.
To Summarize, all of P/D’s skills are too weak to be considered threatening, save for 1S# Sneak Attack. And 1S# Sneak attack can only be used in stealth.

Now on to S/D.
S/D’s a bit more complicated and not as reliant on stealth as P/D but it still still needs regular stealth to be effective.
First thing to understand about S/D, it’s ideal damage dealer is its auto-attack. This presents a problem to S/D users as Sword’s Auto Attack is about as basic as auto attacks get. They face the challenge of needing to score as many hits as possible to down their foes all while having to avoid as much damage as possible while in melee range to cope with Thief’s general squishyness.
How do the overcome this challenge? Their 1S# Tactical Strike. Tactical Strike is a rather low damage skills but it has the effect that if you hit someone from behind they’ll be dazed (while dazed a player can still move but use no other skills then stun breaks.) for 2 seconds (1.5 seconds in sPvP) and if you hit from this front, you’ll inflict a 5 second blind (let it be known that Blind is the condition equivalent to Aegis, it makes it so the victim will miss their next attack then wear off).
Tactical Strike allows S/D to perform as a control spec with the aim of scoring as many hits as possible while trying to prevent as many retaliatory hits as possible.
And as stated, Tactical Strike is a stealth only skills so Cloak and Dagger is essential in using Tactical Strike to its fullest.
Now I’ll got over the other skills.
2# Infiltrator’s Strike/Shadow Return. Infiltrator’s Strike makes you shadowstep to a target enemy and immobilize them for 1 second, then becomes Shadow Return.
Shadow Return is a stun break that shadowsteps you back to where you first cast Infiltrator’s Strike and removes 1 condition.
All in all, a good skill, but you won’t kill anyone with it due to its low damage.

3# Flanking Strike. A mid to high damage evade skill that whirls you behind your target and strike with an unblockable boon strip then a mid high damage strike.
Sounds awesome on paper, unfortunately the skill’s pathing is bad making it highly inaccurate and worthless against moving targets. Its evade also activates slow so it’s not viable as an instantaneous evade skill.

4# Dancing Dagger. I’ve already explained dancing dagger, S/D sees a bit more use out of it but it’s still low damage.

Now you may be thinking S/D sounds almost passable as a set without stealth which is almost true. It’s probably the most balanced stealth set, but there’s one problem, S/P.

S/P not only has everything S/D has only without stealth, with the exception that it trades stealth and boon strip for a burst attack.
What do I mean by it has everything S/D has? Well first they both have Infiltrator’s Strike/Shadow Return.
Now that’s out of the way, even though S/P doesn’t have stealth to access Tactical Strike, it can skill daze and blind all it wants with it’s last 3 skills.
3# Pistol Whip. Pistol Whip leads off with a half second stun then proceeds to assault the victim with flurry of slashes while invulnerable. Its like a rooted version of Blurred Frenzy with a stun.
4# Headshot. A quarter second spammable projectile that dazes. Not as powerful as tactical strike, but it’s ranged and a spammable interrupt.
5# Black Powder. Fires a blinding shot and creates a 4 second smoke field around the thief which blinds enemies in it every time it pulses.

So basically S/D and S/P and the same except S/D is more defensive and has stealth, and S/P is more offensive and doesn’t have stealth. If you remove S/D’s frequent access to stealth, S/D will become completely inferior to S/P and lose the the core of its play style becoming a completely pointless set.

Amins.3710:

Dual.8953:

Amins.3710:

Stealth is equivilant to an Elite.

Most Elites prolong death or provide Burst Dmg.

Stealth gives the avenue for both of these aspects.

Give Stealth the Cooldown of an Elite via increasing the Stealth Debuff to 20+seconds.

Make thieves use tactic’s, not abuse of an ill thought out ability.

If they come out of stealth, they are forced to fight for more than 3 seconds, then hide again.

I had a copper for the of amount I have to times I’ve had to explain this I’d be able to buy my Precursor.

This suggestion would render the S/D and P/D worthless, forcing P/D to only fight with its incredibly weak auto attack and making S/D completely inferior to S/P. And better yet, this suggestion will do very little to stop D/x builds from making insane Backstab bursts and spamming Heartseeker.

The Burst isn’t the issue.

The issue is never being able to target your enemy or when you do, you only have them targeted for 5s before they restealth from the PLETHORA of stealth abilities they have and the screwed up Inititive Regen they’re alloted.

Burst is just an issue w/ other people playing glass cannons. That’s a Choice… nothing more and you, as thieves, deserve to wrech people who decide to play glass cannons. That’s part of your role.

The issue is STEALTH. Not Burst.

If you’re a single target class that doesn’t have good AOE, you’re hosed… any competient thief is just going to lay waste to them.

Still it doesn’t justify cutting S/D and P/D at the wrists just because D/x is good at everything.

Runiir.6425:

Thieves fight tooth and nail to keep their OP status rather than willingly try and balance themselves.
EVERY single game where stealth=total invisibility also has multiple ways to force the class out of the invisibility. THAT is balance. Not just force them out but forcably prevent them from re-stealthing.

So yes, thief stealth needs something done to it, be it various abilities that strip thieves of stealth and keep them from re-using it for a long duration, or cause thieves to immediately drop from stealth the moment they take damage. Barring that…risk/reward is needed.

What? Crying because you can’t stealth stomp people if that was the case? Get over it, everyone else is targetable while jumping on people. Crying because you now have to think far more tactically and deal with the repurcusions of being outnumbered? So does everyone else. THIS is balance. Currently the thief is not balanced worth a kitten in this regard.

Plenty of thieves have made nerf suggestions. It’s just we aren’t going to stand idly by when people who know nothing of how tied to stealth some thief weapons are, make suggestion that would literally cripple some some weapon step. The icing on the cake is those suggested changes, usually directed at D/x builds actually nerf the other builds worse then the D/x ones, actually promoting the use of backstab instagib and heartseeker spam. Others are so off base they’d make thieves unplayable.

Make it 33% reduction like Protection don’t disable a thief’s ability to proc stealth traits and use stealth skills (Tactical Strike, Back Stab, Sneak Attack ect) every 3 seconds so long as this psuedo-stealth is active and we’ll talk.

Fred Fargone.3127:

Dual.8953:

Runiir.6425:

Ofcourse a lot for this hate would be gone if they simply made stealth cause you to fade out but still have an outline people could track. The outline forces you to be renderred thus cullign would apply on when it applies to everyone, no special stealth culling (the game does not bother to load a stelthed thief, thus culling is giving thieves a constant extra second in free culling enabled stealth). Thieves should be targetable while in stealth if they are in front of their enemy (stealth while an enemy is FACING you and they don’t drop target). Seriously…there is no logic at all with current stealth mechanics. Whoever thought these mechanics made sense obviously was only thinking about how fun it would be to create a class mechanic that requires no thought to keep the class alive (seriously, stealth build thieves require no thinking at all to win with) where is the risk/reward with stealth?There is NO RISK with stealth.

Know what? Fine…don’t like any suggestion, lets institute some risk/reward. Thieves have been getting nothing but rewarded for using stealth…time to add in the risk. All damage that hits a stealthed target is increased by 50%. That’ll make even a clip of a stealthed thief far more dangerous.

This won’t work because stealth on it’s own provides no bonus to thieves other then being not seen, untargetable and unlocking thier stealth skill. No way to mitigate damage. In my experience partial stealth fools no one save for the completely in attentive. So if this happened, thieves, a class with medium armour in the lowest HP tier, a class with no defensive boons, blocks or invulnerable states, no stabilty, would be forced to facetank every attack directed at them. Oh and and their evasion is B grade compared to Ranger, Elementalist and possibly Engie.

Wait, what? There are traits, for example, to combine with stealth for extra speed while in stealth, so it does provide extra bonus.

Besides, being invisible and untargettable is quite a perk, if someone is lucky enough to hit you with 1000 AoE dmg, that should be at least doubled imo. (Oh, did I forgot to mention that while a thief can’t be seen, he doesn’t turn blind himself. So just dodge the red circle for win.)

Yeah but if you’d read what I’m replying to, they’re suggesting making thieves visible and targetable even in stealth. So aside from the traits all those bonuses you mentioned, out the window.

Amins.3710:

Stealth is equivilant to an Elite.

Most Elites prolong death or provide Burst Dmg.

Stealth gives the avenue for both of these aspects.

Give Stealth the Cooldown of an Elite via increasing the Stealth Debuff to 20+seconds.

Make thieves use tactic’s, not abuse of an ill thought out ability.

If they come out of stealth, they are forced to fight for more than 3 seconds, then hide again.

I had a copper for the of amount I have to times I’ve had to explain this I’d be able to buy my Precursor.

This suggestion would render the S/D and P/D worthless, forcing P/D to only fight with its incredibly weak auto attack and making S/D completely inferior to S/P. And better yet, this suggestion will do very little to stop D/x builds from making insane Backstab bursts and spamming Heartseeker.

Runiir.6425:

Ofcourse a lot for this hate would be gone if they simply made stealth cause you to fade out but still have an outline people could track. The outline forces you to be renderred thus cullign would apply on when it applies to everyone, no special stealth culling (the game does not bother to load a stelthed thief, thus culling is giving thieves a constant extra second in free culling enabled stealth). Thieves should be targetable while in stealth if they are in front of their enemy (stealth while an enemy is FACING you and they don’t drop target). Seriously…there is no logic at all with current stealth mechanics. Whoever thought these mechanics made sense obviously was only thinking about how fun it would be to create a class mechanic that requires no thought to keep the class alive (seriously, stealth build thieves require no thinking at all to win with) where is the risk/reward with stealth?There is NO RISK with stealth.

Know what? Fine…don’t like any suggestion, lets institute some risk/reward. Thieves have been getting nothing but rewarded for using stealth…time to add in the risk. All damage that hits a stealthed target is increased by 50%. That’ll make even a clip of a stealthed thief far more dangerous.

This won’t work because stealth on it’s own provides no bonus to thieves other then being not seen, untargetable and unlocking thier stealth skill. No way to mitigate damage. In my experience partial stealth fools no one save for the completely in attentive. So if this happened, thieves, a class with medium armour in the lowest HP tier, a class with no defensive boons, blocks or invulnerable states, no stabilty, would be forced to facetank every attack directed at them. Oh and and their evasion is B grade compared to Ranger, Elementalist and possibly Engie.

Riselight.3695:

What I would like to see changed:
-Decreased movement speed when stealthed.
-Longer stealth CD times and/or shorter stealth duration times and/or longer revealed buff.
-A skill that can detect stealthed players, and give revealed buff.

So you want Pistol/Dagger and Sword/Dagger to be rendered worthless so all thieves will be forced to run Dagger mainhand heartseeker spamming builds?

Mayhem.1935:

Daeqar.8965:

Columba.9730:

Where does it say that only thieves are allowed to solo?

Secondly, if Spvp and WvWvW are the same, how about we balance thieves in WvWvW the same way they are balanced in Spvp?

No where, and there’s lots of people that run around with D/D Ele, GS Warr, Mesmer, and even some Necros and bunker troll Guardian builds and the like running around solo looking for 1v1 targets. And lots of them have great success with it and particularly look for Thieves to single out. I even saw a Ranger doing it last night who was shockingly good, although I’m not entirely sure he wasn’t cheating because I saw him using abilities of sorts that were completely new to me.

The thing is, most other classes have lots of good teamplay options to build for – and they use them. Why would they setup for dueling instead of setup to actually win? Thieves don’t have much of an option because small scale is literally the only thing the class is good at – the only thing that makes them special. They are deliberately designed to be lacking in other areas as a trade-off. The only logical thing left to do is scrounge for small scale tasks in WvW that are helpful and just be really good at them, no matter how limited those tasks may be.

Because manning that arrow cart is to beneath a thief in large scale, am i right?

My boar could man an arrow cart if the system would let him. I will admit though in PvDoor, siege is great for badge farming.

Teamkiller.4315:

Gaudrath.6725:

Another option is to add a “faerie fire” or tracking type of skill, which would prevent the thief from stealthing for x seconds if they are hit with it while in combat, or maybe cause the thief to leave glowing footprint marks behind while in stealth, which would become visible only if within a certain radius from the player doing the tracking.

This would not destroy stealth gameplay, but it would make it more difficult to get away for thieves, especially if they attack larger groups (hence higher chances that they will get hit by one of the above skills). The inconvenience of not being able to easily stealth and disengage would be compensated by the fact that someone would have to slot a utility skill specifically designed to counter thieves, and otherwise useless in combat, so not everyone would be running around with a “thief radar”.

This is a pretty good idea, but instead of a new utility skill (that is useless for anything else) why not add it to your current weapon skills. For example it could be warrior rifle and longbow that have a tag on a thief in stealth, put on one of their longer CD weapon skills, and only lasts for a very short time. You would put it on two weapons so no class ever feels like it’s FORCED to run that weapon.

And in return, you would have to buff thieves to compensate for this. Sorry, just how it is.

It’d have to only make the thief visible to the naked eye. If it knocked thieves out of stealth it’d be the definition of a shutdown skill the for P/D set. It’d be nearly as harsh on the S/D set as well.

Columba.9730:

slender.1482:

FearSeven.6357:

1 – Get rid of stealth reviving and stomping.
2 – Nerf Shadow’s Embrace.

And what would you propose is done? Just rambling about things you think are wrong because of how you lost to it won’t ever help.

A warrior/guardian can res a player with stability, shields, aegis, protection, etc. An ele can mist form back to the lines and guarantee a res for himself. A thief can stealth and res. Without the stealth a thief can ….? Even so, if I try to stealth res or stomp against a group of competent players, I WILL die. How about next time you see a thief stealth stomping, you AOE the player he’s stomping, or even counter stealth the player, knock backs on the player, it’s so easy.

Shadow’s embrace is the only condi removal thieves have and costs 6 initiative or a minimum 40 second cooldown to trigger. With black powder builds it costs 6+3-2(refunded) initiative to activate stealth. What do you propose to nerf shadow’s embrace or stealth stomps? All I see is resenting a mechanic that you lost against with no insight on how it even works.

A thief can take the same risks we do by rezzing others.

Fine. Now give use our Invulerability, Stability, Aegis and Protection.

Mayhem.1935:

amiable.4823:

Make utility googles reveal stealthed players… There you go, the engineer becomes useful as a class (anti-stealth) and stealth has a an effective hard counter but requires specialization to use. May want to add a similar utility to necros as well.

This happened in DAoC as well. The ranger/hunter/scout class had a passive ability allowing them to detect stealth. They further had a usable ability with a cooldown that made stealth obsolete to them for a short period. Sorry, dont remember the names but w/e.

If they add a stealth detection it needs to be unable to force revealed. Maybe give the thief a the transparent model allies see them as. Otherwise the detection skill would become a “Shutdown” Skill for the non-D/x stealthers. Stealth might need a statistical buff too to cope with the fact that the thief will have the tankiness of a boonless Ele, with no healing power or vigor.

Cloud.7613:

NinjaEd.3946:

If they allow a stealth reveal, I deserve a button that auto kills any ranger pet. You know, because once the ranger has a pet it is entirely in their control…. It is a prof mechanic, there are counters and ways to track a stealthed player. Big no to stealth reveal unless it is something crafty like being within 130 units of an enemy you get a faded outline of them (still non-targetable) or increasing time between stealth but also increasing stealth time (so longer stealths, but you are visible for longer as the trade off when you exit).

Because killing a big 40% of rangers dps because stealth is over powered makes sense?

Sure. You’re killing 90% of P/D dps and 70% of S/D’s control. (And CC is all S/D has besides auto-attacking.)

silentnight warrior.2714:

Just put the CnD with a 20 sec cooldown on the stealth. You will be able to use the skill when you want but only will give stealth 20 sec after the first use. That way you will use it when you realy need.

P/D and S/D thieves need stealth every 3 seconds. Without it P/D becomes worthless and S/D becomes completely outclassed by S/P. Neither set has a burst, and without stealthing, they’ll be stuck auto-attacking for 20 seconds.

Columba.9730:

Daendur.2357:

LordByron.8369:

A good thief won t die against almost any class….

works as intended.

Where does it state that its intended that thieves never die 1:1?

A good anything won’t die to any class. Least in a 1v1 environment.

Energetik.6471:

D W.5179:

My take on a better outmanned buff :
-Double the NPC’s on all objectives for your server.
-Double the respawn rate on all NPC’s for your server.
-Add X% (variable based on how outmanned you are) defense to all walls/gates.

I say just remove it, it isn’t doing anyone any good but the server with the advantage.

The server with the least players is the one with the advantage?

Shadow.3475:

So stuped that player can stealth midle off a attack, that should be imposible, at least add so as long as you get damage you cant stealth, so tick damage and all most be removed before you can stealth. (if you have tick damage and stealth you get unstealth when tick damage you)

That’s essentially saying “make it so this class can’t defend while being attacked” or better yet in P/D’s case, “make all damage dazes this class”.

Maverick Holix.1382:

in Wvw increase “Exposed” duration by 1 or 1.5 seconds to make up for rendering….nuff said.

That hurts the non-bursters’ ability to sustain themselves in a fight. Culling’s being removed next patch but if a change must be made, making revealed kick in no matter what is more ideal for both side. Perserves ability to perform decently in combat and eliminates the pseudo-permastealth.

Xsorus.2507:

Dual.8953:

Xsorus.2507:

Dual.8953:

PolishSausage.1279:

How do you make it less effective for escaping? Make it so revealed kicks in no matter what. This would make permastealth impossible because the thief will have to wait 3 seconds no matter what.
Another option is to shorten stealth which would make permastealth much harder to maintain.

Another thing to consider is the possibility of adding diminishing returns to stealth duration when spamming stealth moves. In this case, the actual stealth duration would be shorter and shorter with each use until the Thief essentially cannot stealth at all. In theory, this could not only discourage permastealthing, but make Thieves commit to a fight more, and save stealth either for attack setups, or as an actual emergency tool as it was intended, instead of just a spammable reset button.

If a thief is constantly stealth attacking it means they’re staying in the fight. Adding diminishing returns repeated stealth attacking would punish S/D and P/D for existing and encouage thieves to go for the backstab burst setup, pooling all their power into an insta-gib then running away to reset. Spamming stealth to stay in combat isn’t resetting. Doing hit and runs is resetting.

Who says Cloak and Dagger has to stealth you, and that Stealth should be the only way to give you an opener?

What if Cloak and Dagger just allowed you to use your Opener from out of Stealth?

Then S/D would have little to no sustain, no burst (well it already has no burst) and be completely inferior to S/P in control. P/D would be P/P without Unload, Headshot or BlackPowder, aka: everything that makes P/P useable.

It’s be the same as right now..Except you wouldn’t be invisible.

What he say about P/D, on the S/D end, 4 words. Spammable two second daze. S/D would be unbridled from the revealed cooldown.

Xsorus.2507:

Dual.8953:

PolishSausage.1279:

How do you make it less effective for escaping? Make it so revealed kicks in no matter what. This would make permastealth impossible because the thief will have to wait 3 seconds no matter what.
Another option is to shorten stealth which would make permastealth much harder to maintain.

Another thing to consider is the possibility of adding diminishing returns to stealth duration when spamming stealth moves. In this case, the actual stealth duration would be shorter and shorter with each use until the Thief essentially cannot stealth at all. In theory, this could not only discourage permastealthing, but make Thieves commit to a fight more, and save stealth either for attack setups, or as an actual emergency tool as it was intended, instead of just a spammable reset button.

If a thief is constantly stealth attacking it means they’re staying in the fight. Adding diminishing returns repeated stealth attacking would punish S/D and P/D for existing and encouage thieves to go for the backstab burst setup, pooling all their power into an insta-gib then running away to reset. Spamming stealth to stay in combat isn’t resetting. Doing hit and runs is resetting.

Who says Cloak and Dagger has to stealth you, and that Stealth should be the only way to give you an opener?

What if Cloak and Dagger just allowed you to use your Opener from out of Stealth?

Then S/D would have little to no sustain, no burst (well it already has no burst) and be completely inferior to S/P in control. P/D would be P/P without Unload, Headshot or BlackPowder, aka: everything that makes P/P useable.

PolishSausage.1279:

How do you make it less effective for escaping? Make it so revealed kicks in no matter what. This would make permastealth impossible because the thief will have to wait 3 seconds no matter what.
Another option is to shorten stealth which would make permastealth much harder to maintain.

Another thing to consider is the possibility of adding diminishing returns to stealth duration when spamming stealth moves. In this case, the actual stealth duration would be shorter and shorter with each use until the Thief essentially cannot stealth at all. In theory, this could not only discourage permastealthing, but make Thieves commit to a fight more, and save stealth either for attack setups, or as an actual emergency tool as it was intended, instead of just a spammable reset button.

If a thief is constantly stealth attacking it means they’re staying in the fight. Adding diminishing returns repeated stealth attacking would punish S/D and P/D for existing and encouage thieves to go for the backstab burst setup, pooling all their power into an insta-gib then running away to reset. Spamming stealth to stay in combat isn’t resetting. Doing hit and runs is resetting.

I find 0/30/30/0/10 works well enough on my S/D. The highlights of my build are blind, regen, condition removal on stealth (which is about every 3 seconds in combat).

Pirhana.8935:

The main problem i see with stealth is that it lets the player choose his fight AND have the ability to leave anytime they feel they arent going to win.

With most other games stealthers got to choose their fights but they also had to finish it. (In most cases you chose a target you thought you could beat easily)

Now if you could somehow apply that to this game that would fix alot of problems but i dont know how they would do it with this games mechanix.

I guess you could say 10sec cooldown on using stealth While in combat……….might work. that way you can use stealth as much u want out of combat and choose your fight and open with it for the stealth attack. And if you did happen to get attacked you could still use it once to try to get away

Just my idea. My 1st 80 was a thief and ill even tell you stealth is too strong just because of how often it can be used. I mainly stoppe dplaying him because i dont like the intitive mechanic tho

Some thieves need to frequent access to their stealth skill to maintain passable effectiveness in combat. They generally stealth for less then a second at a time under ideal conditions. I think making stealth less effective as an escape tool is a better option then making it making certain sets useless in combat.
(Btw these sets aren’t D/x)

How do you make it less effective for escaping? Make it so revealed kicks in no matter what. This would make permastealth impossible because the thief will have to wait 3 seconds no matter what.
Another option is to shorten stealth which would make permastealth much harder to maintain.

Xsorus.2507:

The ability to reset a fight when you’re losing is always going to be overpowered..

I can outplay a thief all day long, and if he wants, he can reset the fight till he’s full HP and go again till eventually I get unlucky and he wins…

I do it on my thief all the time..I get in over my head, and then I just reset the fight…

zero skill required..

Yeah. And the whole time you’re being more an annoyance then a threat. If the zerg wastes thier time on you, they probably weren’t doing anything important. If they had an objective, they’d give you as little of time of day as possible.

I’ve been getting into leveling my engie recently and almost at 30. I’m wondering how well kits scale at the later levels. I’m currently running Med Kit, Flamethrower and Elixer Gun. I’m thinking I’ll want a Sigil of Energy when I hit 80.

This is the Thief board, not the Necro board. This is way back from the first month after launch.

Columba.9730:

Dual.8953:

Columba.9730:

Daendur.2357:

in a game where stealth duration is so short, having a movement speed reduction will make it useless.

They can nerf stealth by doubling “revealed” debuff duration and, when a player is affected by “revealed”, gains protection, regeneration and 25stacks of might.

Stealth duration isn’t short. Permastealthing is easy. Go Look at the videos.

Columba: a single stealth is 3-4 seconds. Chained stealth can prolong it, but on it’s own it’s 3-4 seconds. Even Shadow Refuge only achieves it’s longer stealth by stacking together smaller stealths. He made a nerf suggestion, why are you trying to argue about it?

So stealth is longer than 3-4 seconds, lol. You said so yourself – chain stealth. Why are you arguing the point?

Stacked stealth is only achievable in Shadow Refuge. And Chained stealth isn’t one long stealth, but rather the stealther restealthing as often as possible. X number of individual 3-4 second stealths placed end to end.
I’m arguing it because I’m a compulsive corrector, if I see wrong, I correct it.

“Fun” is an even more relative concept then balance. Fun is subject to personal opinion. Balance is more grounded, and easier to build around though is still relative as a portion of it is subject to personal play style, scalling up to common playstyles of the community. This is why tier lists of PvP games tend to vary between regions.
I should add that making a game as balanced as possible isn’t a game successful either. If it were, Smash Bros and MvC2 wouldn’t be nearly as popular as they are.

Columba.9730:

Daendur.2357:

in a game where stealth duration is so short, having a movement speed reduction will make it useless.

They can nerf stealth by doubling “revealed” debuff duration and, when a player is affected by “revealed”, gains protection, regeneration and 25stacks of might.

Stealth duration isn’t short. Permastealthing is easy. Go Look at the videos.

Columba: a single stealth is 3-4 seconds. Chained stealth can prolong it, but on it’s own it’s 3-4 seconds. Even Shadow Refuge only achieves it’s longer stealth by stacking together smaller stealths. He made a nerf suggestion, why are you trying to argue about it?

“ALL” that word there is what’s wrong with this arguement. Some attention needs do be given to 1v1 but in a game where XvY is common, it needs consideration too.

Daendur.2357:

in a game where stealth duration is so short, having a movement speed reduction will make it useless.

They can nerf stealth by doubling “revealed” debuff duration and, when a player is affected by “revealed”, gains protection, regeneration and 25stacks of might.

That’s fine for D/x but no good for S/D and P/D.
If there is a nerf, I recommend making Revealed happen no matter what or a 25-30% nerf to stealth duration. It’ll throw the complainers a bone and perserve the stealther’s ability to stay in the fight.

Sebrent.3625:

Hey Cynical, I’m well-aware of how toughness works. I’m also aware that Mesmers (light armor) are doing quite well in Knight’s armor … as I previously posted. Watch some of SevenMirror’s stuff.

There are also Engineers and Rangers that are wearing +toughness gear.

If you actually know what the differences are between light, medium, and heavy armor it’s a ~14% difference between light and heavy. ~7% difference between medium and heavy. So what’s the issue here? for every 100 damage you’d take, a warrior takes 93. 1,000 to you is 930 to the warrior. Oh no, he took 70 less damage than you. I guess that warrants you being stealth for a majority of the fight while he has to stay visible and dodge roll attacks from people that can actually see him, lol. Just like Rangers, Engineers, Necros, Elementalists, etc. do.

But yeah … If you could backstab a Thief for 10,000 damage, you’d only backstab the warrior in the same set of gear for 9,300. Lol! You sure told me! :-p

Yeah no. When I build for survivability and some GC warrior can insta-down me with his Whirlwind attack, I think that my class might be squishy.

Runiir.6425:

Anyone stealthed hit by a melee attack should immediately be revealed and incapable of going back into stealth for 10 seconds.
Cannot stealth while taking damage from a condition (exception of this rule is the heal skill that stealths of course).

These two things would solve most anyone’s problems with stealth and force thieves to be more tactical instead of spammy with their stealth skills. I’ll support any solution that forces thieves to actually THINK while they fight. I’ve played the perma stealth style (it’s what people call it, not what it is honestly capable of, unbunch your panties) and it is boring in the extreme as there is no thought to it really.

That would downright break non-burst stealth thieves. Certain thieves need access their stealth skills as often as possible (approximately every three seconds) or they suffer a lackluster damage output. These thieves don’t really use stealth for stealth but rather their stealth attacks due to all thier other skills being too weak offensively.

@OP: I think there’s better options then making it so certain skills render a single class inert. It’s like having a skill to make it so Eles can’t element swap. It should be handled carefully. I think just making revealed occur no matter is a better option. (For various reasons that I don’t care to re-recite at 2:00 am)

Once again I’ll recite this.
If stealth gets a nerf, I think the best would be to make it so revealed triggers no matter what, effectively eliminating all chances of achieving permastealth. It’d nerf stealth as means to escape or sneak around zergs unnoticed, while perserving thief’s ability to maintain combat uptime.
I’d also settle for a 25% nerf to stealth duration.

Jinks.2057:

I think thieves are almost there in terms of balance

They need to give them a few more buffs to achieve this tho

P/P needs a reliable way to stealth without utility usage

I think P/P would benefit more from a movement buff instead of encroaching on P/D’s territory. Like have Unload grant swiftness, cripple or vigor.

70% speed increase during the channel of unload would be cool, encouraging P/P users to kite.

Have you submitted your specs to Anet in a helpdesk ticket? Also, why is this in WvW? There are tech support boards.

It hasn’t effected me. Though I understand spies making siege was a problem, I think it’s less used now that transfers cost money. If you see it happen I suggest watching them for a bit. Siege needs people to use them or they’ll despawn after about a half an hour, so staking them out may let you catch the spy.

I beg to differ. I’ve play my share of games that both team play and duels, and the difference is very noticeable. Some things that are balanced in team fights are over powered in duels, and the inverse is very true too.
In GW2, a good example would be Bladetrail. An okay ranged attack on a single target, but it maxes out it’s effectiveness when there are two opponents, then it’s effectiveness decreases as you add more opponents.
Another example would be P/P thieves. They’re pretty weak against groups but they become much better against single targets. (Even if they still are arguably sub-par)

Aberrant.6749:

ensoriki.5789:

^ All thief weapons can burst if that’s what a thief wants to do with them. That’s just reality. S/D most certainly can. Well excluding Shortbow.

P/D can burst? I don’t think so… with a GC set up it does about the same damage as a non-back hitting backstab. It’s a condition damage weapon pair… and condition damage isn’t burst.

Only way S/D can do anything burst like is with haste… and then it’s basically just haste auto attack… aka not very bursty. S/D is control/utility, not burst.

Then again we might define burst differently (I guess)…

Yeah. I don’t go around with Haste and Assassin’s Signet slotted, waiting for it to come off cool down like a BS thief. I get in there and fight my opponents while maintaining as much blind and daze to get my kills.

Aberrant.6749:

Dual.8953:

Laika.8795:

Add 1 init cost and -100 range to HS, and your problem will pretty much be solved. But really, if you immobilize or even snare those noobs, they are just bleeding init. Just hit them with one of those and dodge away and enjoy the free kill when they peter out.

Acelerion.6820:

tl:dr: heart seeker needs to decide if it wants to be damage or utility, it shouldent have both. Compensate in other areas ect…

I completely agree. S/x gap closer does practically no damage, it is like 90% utility (but it’s utility is second to none). I don’t see how anyone justifies huge range, combo finisher, and ridiculous situational damage. It is especially stupid in the logical progression of being able to do amazing damage with mug>cnd>bs, and just keep on your target until dead with this ability. A choice must be made. Revealed should come up no matter what (no stealth stacking) culling disabled and HS changed… After that, 100% L2P at all the whiners out there.

This I can agree with completely.

Or you could just learn to counter that very simple & predictable strategy instead of crying out for more HS nerfs…

Chill, Dagger mainhand has plenty going for it. An adjustment to HS won’t break it.

BlueDragon.7054:

Kyrion.2749:

HannaDeFreitas.4236:

Warrior might get better damage but has nowhere near the survivability of a good Thief.

That’s because the warrior actually gets to enter the fractal, while the thief stays at Lion’s Arch, safe from all danger….

You don´t know what you are talking about, I ’ ve seen many thieves in 40+ fotm, I´m lv 49 in fotm and I´m a thief, and I have run lv 48 fracs several times. Actually most of the times I play fotm I just play lv 40+ fotm. And I have seen many warriors in those levels dying several times, more than other classes in the run, I’m not saying every warrior I have played with dies much, but there are many dying over and over again…

Stop saying things with no basis.

He’s saying that because thieves have a reputation of being weak in dungeon and are kicked for being precived as too weak. In truth, there seems to be a popular idea that only the Soldier classes are worth having in dungeons. There’s complaint posts about classes getting kicked from dungeon parties, dotting most of the boards.

Engels.8537:

Stiv.1820:

I play a Thief and a Mesmer and Thieves are fine. My Mesmer is much more powerful than my Thief. I get one person down on my thief and spend all my effort trying to stomp them. I get one person down on my Mesmer and I pray that 4 people try to rez and then blow them all to hell.

Yeah because we all know stomping with a thief is almost impossible…

And then with the “I can blow 4 guys in a sec with my mesmer”, i’ll assume that you play against horrible players or, more probably, the only class you played is a thief,

Xsorus.2507:

I play a thief and a ranger, If you have no clue why people complain about thieves, then you have no clue how balance works in games.

High Damage/High Mobility/Stealth combination (with a crap ton of defense and heals in this game) will always be overpowered in every game you have that combination.

The fact that you get the other things now is what makes Thieves really over the top.

Now i could somewhat understand if the class required a high skill cap, But it doesn’t…..It requires the least amount of skill in the game to be successful at….

But don’t worry, I highly doubt they’ll nerf you.. so you’re safe on that front…

This and this, +1

Nobody that have played another class than a thief will say “thieves are ok”, (we are talking about WvW, Spvp without culling, mobs around and big open places is another story and thieves are perfectly ok),

But that’s the problem, many people just play thieves and they can´t see the other face of the coin,

So my advice is avoid talking about balance if you only play one class,

And thieves are far away to be UP on PvE, the problem lies much deeper, you cannot 22222222 mobs, you need to L2P (i know thieves love to say l2p),

---

The HUGE problem with this game is that combat on WvW, (I repeat, WvW Spvp is another story), revolves around 3 principles,

1) High burst damage
2) Damage avoidance
3) Mobility

Now tell me a class that combines all this in a perfect way.. and there you are, did you realize why thieves are op now?

I hope this will be legible,

---

2 things. 1) Not all thieves burst or can burst. (S/D for example has the avoidance and some mobility but no burst)
2) The 2 sides of the coin goes both ways. Thieves can’t let people who know nothing about thieves suggest whatever they want. No class shouldn’t be allowed to defend their class. For instance I could go rant about how I’ve been downed from over half health by Whirlwind Attack (which is a lot, and I don’t run glass) and the warriors would have every right to defend themselves.

The major problem I have is my S/D is on par with S/P but shares Offhands with with the infamous D/D. Now the reason S/D is on par with S/ kitten tealth. It let’s S/D play a similar control role to S/P, but this control skill is sword’s stealth skill Tactical Strike. As a result S/P which has no stealth but still has access to control is more offensive and S/D which gains it’s control through frequent stealth is more defensive and supportive. Without stealth S/D is completely outclassed by S/P on all fronts but a highly inaccurate boon strip, and becomes the only weapon set in GW2 that has to do nothing but a melee auto attack in its offensive skills. (Like wise, P/D may as well be deleted because all will have is a sub-standard ranged auto attack and a retreat). Stealth nerfs have greater potential to break non-burst builds then they do burst builds.
This is the reason I defend stealth.

Drawing Guy.3701:

I find all of these people that defend the stealth in this game to be amusing. Not one solid post of the counter to stealth… just a bunch of drivel that equates to “l2p”

Let’s examine the counters to stealth:

1) Swing melee (most ranged weapons don’t have combos) wildly in front of yourself. If part 2 triggers, continue to spam auto attack. All you need is the thief to nicely stand in your auto attack like mobs do in PvE, and you win!

2) Spam AOEs: Assuming the thief is color blind, he will not see the red ring and will continue to stand there until he dies admidst the fire. If you’re a necro with instant wells, hope the thief isn’t traited to drop all your conditions in seconds anyways. And even if all of that is not the case, this is still the obvious counter – generically attacking in an area less than that of a single dodge and guess against a plane a thief can reach in 2 seconds that you can cover less than 5% of is pretty much guaranteed success.

3) Play with pets – once the thief is visible again, it will tell you where he is. Yay! Oh wait… he’s back stabbing you or 2500+ units away?

4) Play as a mesmer – your clones seem to have an extra half second of targeting to shatter with. This very well may be what is needed to down a glass cannon thief. As long as the thief stealths when you’re on top of him instead of porting/dodging out of your shatter before stealthing, you have a solid chance! Assuming that ~50% of thieves make this mistake and never learn, this has to be considered a “counter”.

TL;DR – You get an uncounterable defense (as everything I listed are not counters – just crap that would only kill a thief that needs to L2P) that is brokenly compounded in WvW. You get a state with massive bonuses – fastest movement in the game, huge condition removal access, healing – all spammable. There is ZERO downsides to stealth. To build a thief without constant access to stealth is to comparatively kitten yourself – if you were to lose stealth completely, you lose GODMODE for a class that can only have measly access to the highest amount of dodges/evasion in the game on top of paltry spammable blinds, interrupts, and high DPS moves. It would suck to have to work to continue being one of the top WvW/PvP classes in the game. It amuses me to be told my non-stealth build sucks because people can actually see me and dodge my moves when I can dodge/blind every else’s moves much better.

Now for the constructive part of my post. I think the following changes need to be made to stealth and it’s traits:

- Add a slight transparency. Don’t care if it’s a struggle for eagles to see, but it has the character drawn so that fixes culling. Plus it gives a counter to those playing close attention… stealth gives plenty of advantages that it does not need ‘impossible to see/counter’ on top of its list.

- Change “Shadow’s Embrace” to only cure a condition AFTER 3 seconds. To take advantage of this powerful move, you actually need to stay stealthed.

- Change “Infusion of Shadow” to not trigger with Cloak and Dagger. Steal + HiS + powder + refuge already gives plenty of tools to make this a very useful trait. As it is, it’s a CnD spam win button.

- Swap “Fleet Shadow” and “Power Shots” between their trees and tiers. Fleet shadow should be a master trait as it is powerful. It should also rightly belong in the Shadow tree forcing a choice on the powers of stealth rather than making stealth so omni-powerful.

I’m curious as to whom will think such changes will break thieves. My thief is my favorite of all my 80s so far, and will become my main. It will still be my main no matter what they do to stealth.

Better solution. (Or at least what a bunch of us settled on on the Thief boards) But first, culling’s already being removed this month.
Now for the ideas.
-Make Revealed occur no matter what. This will make it so Thieves can’t perform the chained stealth they gain from well timed CnD or HS through Black Powder but still allow stealth builds to maintain their combat up time and keep thieves from being punished for not going burst. I think it should also polarize thieves in the way they play. They’ll either run earlier because their defense is weaker, or become more aggressive and less likely to run. On both ends their escape options are weakened so they have to make a choice.
-adjust Heart seeker. Spamming it may be noobish but it’s still a cheap and effective leap, that is way better then it should be.