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So the DAOC system is refered to as Stealth despite the fact that you can be conditionally seen while it’s active, is it not?
Haha nice try, but its because their stealth has failed at that close distance. I’ve discussed this many times over the years, at least for the person in question. There is a bit of duality there however.
I dont see them changing stealth that drastically at this point. They seem to like playing with “revealed” more than anything.
Same here. Giving ways to counter stealth through utilities (i.e. Sic ’Em) would probably be better than reworking the whole mechanic entirely, especially since a lot of balancing considerations for the thief include the nature of the current mechanic.
In my humble opinion, this is ABSOLUTELY the wrong way to deal with Stealth for the reasons outlined here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Counter-Invisibility-not-Stealth/
TL;DR: existence of hard counters makes the mechanic completely unreliable and thus unviable in competitive settings, where Stealth is already plenty unviable
Before they fixed nametags, clones were a completely usedless defense for mesmers for the same reason. Clones are only useful defensively when they are working effectively, as in, they’re actually possibly mistaken for the real thing.
Stealth is in a similar boat. Your proposed changes would result in ZERO backstabs happenning, and stealthed thieves getting focused and eliminated 100% of the time. Despite all of stealth’s useful traits, those traits would be null and void if you made this change for a single reason:
Thieves can not both attack and remain stealthed. Anyone can attack the thief while stealthed. All you’d be doing is making people hold off on hitting a cooldown while following the thief to exactly wherever stealth would end, then bursting him down all at once, the same way people deal with shield warriors. You wait for blocks to end, then you burst.
As for these other points:
An important consideration is that clones do not make the actual Mesmer immune to targetting, whereas my proposed changes to Stealth will keep this important defensive aspect of Stealth.
The fact that Backstabs will become more difficult to pull off is definitely true. However, the proposed 50% extra movement speed should help towards alleviating the handicap of being visible. Remember, Backstab has a rather generous arc that includes much of the sides of an enemy as well. In melee range, if you have superior movement speed and have melee assist turned off like every Thief should, it’s rather easy to quickly sway to the side and land a full-strength “Backstab”. It even opens up the opportunity for feints like strafing sideways and make your enemy expose his back TO you by moving in the opposite direction immediately after and making use of the superior movement speed.
Also if movement speed boosts aren’t enough, there is plenty of other trivial ways to tweak abilities like Backstab to make it more viable in a visible setting. For instance, normalizing the Facestab damage coefficient to be much higher than it currently is, but still below a Backstab, so that Backstabbing becomes a more subtle boost to damage. There is also the possibility to add some kind of utility effect to stabbing someone from the front, such as a condition application, CC or AoE effect, which opens up more interesting play decisions in the Thief’s playbook. This way Facestab will actually be situationally more desirable than a Backstab. As an example, if we give Facestab a damaging condition like Burning (I know it doesn’t exactly make sense to burn someone face-stabbing them, just an example), suddenly D/D condition builds will have a new condi to apply and will become that much more viable as a result.
These kinds of tweaks and slight buffs will actually become possible once the stigma of the 100% invisibility wears off as a result of these changes. Personally I’m very excited to see where Thieves can end up with it implemented.
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Stealth’s only viable use as a defense is being invisible.
I’m going to have to disagree with the first statement.
Being completely invisible is definitely one of the defensive aspects of Stealth. However, Stealth has a separate defensive mechanic that I believe is much more important defensively, which is target dropping and targetting immunity.
Being invisible is an almost insurmountable defensive mechanic against new players that are inexperienced in fighting against Thieves.
However, at higher levels of play, most enemies will be able to read your positioning in Stealth so well that it really makes little difference whether or not you appear completely invisible to them, through things like cleaving chain attacks, AoE + boon procs, traps, channels, and just general thinking-like-a-Thief-ness. I’m sure most of us here in these forums have either had similar experiences when fighting against other good players or have done it to other Thieves ourselves, or both.
Target drop and targetting immunity, however, are much more reliable defensive mechanics, that some of us may take for granted when using Stealth. While in Stealth, target drop and targeting immunity guarantees that an entire categorization of single-targetted skills cannot be used on you from any enemy, so you can safely focus on avoiding the remaining classes of skills, namely cleaves, ground targetted AoE, and long channels that existed on you before you Stealthed.
Stealth in its current state is clearly disproportionately powerful against new players. ANet has been responding to this, and likely will continue to respond to this through nerfs in ways that inevitably make competitive play involving Stealth based builds even more unviable than they already are. Stealth, in the way it is now, will simply continue to receive nerfs, and never buffs, because of how much trouble 100% invisibility gives new players, despite it’s sorry state in competitve sPvP.
Removing 100% invisibility will lower the skill floor required to deal with Stealth, making life less frustrating for newer players, while strategies for dealing with Stealth at higher levels remains essentially unchanged, but as a result of these changes we will gain access to a whole repertoire of viable builds for competitive sPvP.
I feel Stealth without 100% Invisibility, but with the ability to contest points, will be a better baseline for the Stealth mechanic, and allow for more even-handed balance tweaks that open up the possibility of buffs in to Stealth in other much-needed aspects.
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Let’s not get carried away with semantics.
However, I would welcome any discussion on why you think these changes wouldn’t be better for the Thief profession and the game as a whole.
Its not getting carried away. Since the beginning of rpgs, if someone is successfully stealthed, they are completely unseen and effectively invisible. Its the one-sided nature of the ability.
But anyway your idea is similiar to daoc, when close enough (very close) your enemy would see a transparent outline as described and could target you in a limited fashion. The distance at which you disappeared completely was determined by your stealth skill. This allowed people to hone in and attempt to engage a stealther even while stealthed, a much better system.
So the DAOC system is refered to as Stealth despite the fact that you can be conditionally seen while it’s active, is it not?
What I’m trying to say is that reasonable people can disagree about semantics, but we shouldn’t let that get in the way of the more important discussion of the underlying mechanics.
I do agree that the DAOC system sounds reasonable.
However I don’t think the two systems can be reasonably compared, as in DAOC you have a single (few?) long duration Stealth available, whereas in GW2 you have only extremely short duration Stealths available (asides from perma-Stealth D/P which does not match the way Stealth is intended to work in this game and needs to be removed). Changing the GW2 system to match the DAOC one would be extremely laborious and have massive balance complications, to the point that it is simply not feasible this far into release.
Hi All,
Sorry for not getting back sooner, i have been rather busy this morning. Also thanks for continuing the brainstorm, so really good ideas.
So here are the current actions:
1: Chris to chat with the team about creating 3 threads in each main part of the forums. We should be able to start this of on Monday.
2: Chris to write the rules of engagement (-: Just laying out what we can and can’t talk about.
3: Peeps on this thread to continue to discuss the best way to prioritize the topics for each main area that will run for 2 days each cycle and then rotate.
4: Polls: I am going to raise this as a separate thread early next week to continue discussion as it is a complex topic.I will try to respond as much as i can today and will update on my actions later today or tomorrow. Meanwhile let’s discuss how best to prioritize topics?
Chris
Hi Chris,
I have posted this earlier but I feel it could be lost in sea of posts immediately after it. As this is something I feel very strongly about, here it is again, just in case.
Would something like this fit in your vision for Collaborative Development:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Community-Created-Aesthetic-Content
TL;DR: Give the community the tools and infrastructure, and we’ll make better skins at a faster pace than any professional team of artists anyone can possibly assemble, as has been proven in other games like Dota 2 and TF2. Players will have an endless supply of great skins to choose from and progress towards. Content Creators get acclaim and income from popular skin creations. And ANet gets a majority share of the revenue from selling skins on the Gem store, and can turn their in-house artists’ focus to creating timed content-related skins and artwork, which is a much better use of their time.
I’m being 100% serious when I say this.
Anyone that complains about stealth being over powered needs to seriously think about how they are playing the game. Not being able to see someone, does not make them invincible.
As a thief, I am downing other thieves all the time(When they are in stealth), and will sometimes get downed myself while in stealth. If you pay attention to player movements, and work on improving your movements, you will have 0 problems with stealth.
I’m not sure where you’re getting the vibe that this is a complaint (I will give you the benefit of the doubt that you read the post, or at least the TL;DR).
This suggestion is aimed at improving build variety in sPvP as the primary objective, and making Stealth based builds viable in the conquest meta. A secondary, and purely coincidental benefit to these changes will hopefully be less negativity in the forums to force ANet to continue nerfing Stealth into oblivion, as they are clearly planning to do despite its sorry state in sPvP.
In other words, would you like to be completely invisible while Stealthed and allow enemies to completely dictate when you can and cannot stealth through random Revealed applications? Or would you rather give up the complete invisibility and gain the ability to contest points and move faster passively? Because at this rate we will eventually be going down the former path.
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A person who is stealthed should not be seen, that is the point of being “stealthed”.
What I disagree with is continually disappearing after engagement. Should have kept it more like daoc, where once the fight was on its very difficult to stealth again.
Let’s not get carried away with semantics.
However, I would welcome any discussion on why you think these changes wouldn’t be better for the Thief profession and the game as a whole.
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You are talking about the removal of stealth and instead replacing it with a slightly harder to see version. I am not a fan of the idea at all.
I would consider the ability to contest points in Stealth to be much more crucial to build viability than being completely invisible. The passive movement speed buff suggested should help with escapes and positioning, and target dropping/un-targetability will stay as a defensive mechanic. PvE will also be completely unaffected.
Could you be a bit more specific as to what aspect of these changes you’re not a fan of?
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I have decided to shamelessly bump this thread yet again in response to the Collaborative Development thread started by Chris.
Please consider taking the concept of Collaborative Development a giant leap further by introducing infrastructure to support Community Created Content.
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The Stealth mechanic at the moment is defined around 100% Invisibility. I would like to present my case as to why Stealth would be a better mechanic without it, and suggest how it could be removed without a necessitating complete rework of any mechanics surrounding Stealth.
As we have all seen by now, Stealth is one of the major contributors to Thief QQ in the forums. The sheer amount of negativity surrounding the mechanic in the forums is astounding, and this forces ANet’s hand to repeatedly nerf Stealth to the sad state it’s in today. 100% Invisibility is the reason for most of this negativity, and understandably it is not exactly fun to play against something you can’t see at all for a significant percentage of the fight, balance considerations aside, this alone is true even from the perspective of a Thief player such as myself.
The biggest issue with Stealth, however, is not how others perceive it, but rather the fact that Stealth in itself is mostly a liability for Thieves in the sPvP conquest meta, because Thieves cannot contest points while Stealth is active. This is why a large majority of Thief builds based around Stealth are doomed to be unviable in sPvP, because they cannot contribute effectively to the single most important mechanic to winning games in high-level play. This is again, a direct consequence of the 100% Invisibility aspect of Stealth, because by any measure, to be able to contest points while remaining completely unseen is not fun or fair to play against.
Now that we have laid out why Stealth would be better off without 100% Invisibility, let’s move on to the how:
First and foremost, 100% Invisibility to enemies needs to go. Make a player in Stealth look the same to enemies as they currently do to allies. Keep the name tags removed, and make enemies have to work reasonably harder to see where a Stealthed player is, but not have to guess for it as they do in the status quo. A player in Stealth should still be untargettable by single target skills that require targetting, because without this, Stealth would be completely worthless as a defensive mechanic for classes or builds that have no traits to augment it.
Secondly, allow Stealthed players to contest points, because without 100% Invisibility, there will be plenty of reasonable counterplay options available against a player contesting a point in Stealth. This will immediately improve build variety for Thieves, because Stealth related builds that have been doomed to a lifetime of unviability can now be experimented with. Allowing point contention will also undoubtedly open up many additional non-roamer roles for Thief players in teams, further disrupting the stale sPvP meta. The possibilities are exciting indeed.
Additionally, a passive movement speed increase in Stealth may also be necessary to counteract the loss of 100% Invisibility, for the purpose of facilitating escapes and positioning-based Stealth mechanics like Backstab that would become much more difficult to pull off after the change. I would recommend integrating the +50% movement speed trait for Thieves into the Stealth mechanic itself, which effectively makes a Stealthed player able to move at the same speed in-combat as an out-of-combat player with Swiftness (out-of-combat movement is also capped at this speed AFAIK). The exactly value of this speed increase needs to be experimented with but I feel some degree of improvement to mobility will be required to maintain balance.
Last but not least, AIs need to treat Stealthed players as they always have (as if they were still completely invisible). Without this, Stealth would loose all utility in anything other than PvP.
TL;DR: Stealth as a mechanic would be in a much better state if 100% Invisibility was removed, and allowing point contention in Stealth would improve build variety overall for all classes that make use of Stealth. These changes should also help make Stealth just generally less un-fun to play against, which is definitely an important consideration for new players and player skill progression overall.
Feel free to point out any balance considerations that I may have missed or leave any other constructive feedback.
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I’d like to hear what the Devs feel about taking this idea of Collaborative Development a giant leap further by introducing infrastructure to support Community-Created aesthetic content: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Community-Created-Aesthetic-Content
Community content has been proven to be a more than viable model to sustain the demand for skins in hugely successful horizontal progression based games like TF2 and Dota 2. I firmly believe it could do wonders for the aesthetic progression issues Guild Wars 2 is facing as well.
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D/P hasn’t been used much at high levels for the past few months…
S/D is by far the current Apex predator Thief set.
As for what I think/hope will change, I’m hoping for a comeback for S/P with some buffs to make Pistol Whip a bit more reliable for evasion/damage dealing and toning down of retal damage. D/x really needs a more reliable disengage mechanism than Stealth for it to top S/x in viability.
P/P needs a disengage/gap opener/mobility skill and maybe some kind of evade. Otherwise SB will still end up being the superior set.
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@Colin Do you feel you are understaffed? What can we as players do to help support ANET and not NCSOFT to help you grow your staff to push out key features we need quicker?
Colin " Buy more Gems!"
Seriously tho, there is nothing anyone can do.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/User-Created-Skins/
As Valve has shown with Dota 2 and TF2, with a large enough player-base, the community can create high-quality aesthetic content on their own at a much faster pace than any single professional development studio can ever dream of.
ANet just needs to give us the tools and infrastructure, and we’ll be able to take care of our own needs for more & better skins. ANet’s own art teams can then focus on creating theme fitting aesthetic content for their Living Story arcs, and festivals/events.
Sadly I feel ANet’s parent company, NCSoft, are simply too narrow-minded to allow ANet to allocate resources to these kinds of experiments. Especially judging from how they closed the doors forever on Steam integration due to some petty business model differences.
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Wasn’t this supposed to be one of the categories?
If not, please consider implementing it.
The Open World category is limited to your own server and doesn’t really seem like an appropriate categorization.
Our small guild will be unlocking Challenges soon, and with anywhere from 3-7 members participating in missions each week, it sounds like we will have absolutely 0 chance at completing one of these unless we get some help. I was hoping that the LFG Tool could be part of the solution but the lack of a cross-server Guild Mission category makes this rather unlikely.
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Please keep in mind that if a Thief teleports back using Shadow Return, he can no longer contest the point he was fighting on.
You’re all talking about counterplay in terms of being able to kill the Thief. However, there is already a huge non-ini cost associated with Shadow Return in the sense that every use of it is a step towards loosing a point (or in the case of a teamfight, resulting in your team being down 1 member).
Shadow Return is a disengage. In WvW maybe I can see some validity in complaints about not being able to kill a Thief because they can disengage at any time. However, in sPvP, every time an enemy disengages, you’re 1 step closer to winning the fight. This must-get-kill mentality will only cloud your judgement in tournaments when your priority should be to secure the win for your team.
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5s weapon swap is an advantage exclusive of warriors, that could be granted for free, without spend trait points.
Thieves could chain insane combos without significative CD, if swap weapon every 5s.
We share the same initiative bar between weapons. There is no tangible difference between using a skill on one weapon and chaining it with another vs chaining two skills on the same weapon.
We are expending the same amount of resources either way. The only difference that a 5 second weaponswap cooldown would bring is the added flexibility of being able to choose to spend resources on the other weapon sooner.
Only with CD based weapon skills does it become a tangible advantage, since some cooldowns on weapon skills fall below 9 seconds, meaning you can activate them more often if weaponswap CD was lower. This is why the Arcane tree that shortens Attunement swap cooldown is so important for Elementalists.
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Now this idea I can get behind.
The lack of a pre-event definitely makes the time limit so much more insurmountable for the servers that aren’t able to sustain a full map of people camping at Sparkfly 24×7.
With this implemented we’ll at least have a window of time to gather people and not be already at a timing disadvantage by the time we find out that the event has started.
I don’t see a problem in allowing us to enter orders in stacks of 250 then.
Because the quantity field is only three characters wide.
Obviously this would need interface tweaks to accommodate it.
For instance a separate field for bulk orders that you can use to place an order for x * 250 of an item, where x is the user input.
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malice offset retal
It does make it hurt a bit less, but base Retal is 2x base Malice, and base power is 900 while healing power is 0.
So malice will only offset about 30-50% of retal, and 60% of 15 ticks of Retal will still very much hurt.
I don’t see a problem in allowing us to enter orders in stacks of 250 then.
^ Exactly,
And I am not the person trying to communicate to readers who is one of the best theifs and why, that is the authors responsibilty. I am just pointing out that the author is lacking unbiased criteria. Advertisement agencies are completly biased on trying to get their audience to buy certain products over others by using keen wording, flipping numbers, unbalanced polls, etc.
As a reader of this and many other threads, In all honesty, I would appreciate your work if you provided actual data, analysis, comparisons, to proove that your find is true, instead of personal opinions. Not trying to be disrespectful at all, just being honest.
“… the simple fact that he has been accepted by a highly competitive sPvP team as a regular member, and has demonstrated excellent plays in high-level publicly broadcasted tournaments, really should be sufficient grounds to claim that he is a top tier Thief player.”
As such, the burden is on you to dispute the fact that he is a top tier Thief player, if you have some valid reason to believe he does not deserve this title despite his accomplishments, and not on Sensotix to prove it. The very core of your complaint is ill-formed.
And if you have listened to the interview at any length, you would find that it does very little to promote the player himself, but rather simply acts a venue for him to share his knowledge, experience and opinions of the profession and the competitive meta with other aspiring Thief players.
They took time out of their own schedules to contribute to the Thief/sPvP community, and instead of appreciating their time and efforts, you come into this thread and baselessly attack their credibility and make ill-directed comparisons of this interview to some dirty attention grabbing marketing scheme (because there is just so much personal gain to be reaped in becoming famous in the GW2 sPvP scene, amirite?).
At this point the least you could do is offer an apology for misinterpreting the intent of their work.
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Retal anyone?
Each exploded CB is a potential 5×3 unavoidable Retal ticks.
Good luck with that against any zerg that has a few guardians in it.
I rather not risk my entire account using the methods you mentioned considering ANet’s cryptic policies against 3rd party programs.
I’d perfectly fine with just being able to place bids/asks at higher volumes than 250 per order. I rarely ever want to fill buy orders or buy at asking prices when trading at high volumes anyways.
Even if we set aside the contents of the interview for a moment (which easily demonstrates his profound knowledge of the Thief profession and the state of the current competitive meta), the simple fact that he has been accepted by a highly competitive sPvP team as a regular member, and has demonstrated excellent plays in high-level publicly broadcasted tournaments, really should be sufficient grounds to claim that he is a top tier Thief player.
I’m not even sure why there is any debate about this… Would you claim any of the players who participated in the International are not top tier Dota 2 players?
This would be a very welcome feature indeed.
I trade in high volume commodities almost exclusively and entering orders is so tedious that I only do it by muscle memory on my second screen while watching videos…
Being able to enter larger orders would also reduce the load on ANet’s servers as fewer requests are needed. This alone should be enough reason to implement it.
Cruuk’s build can’t cap points or contest points until you manage to kill the defender(s).
In high level play no team will leave more than 1 player to deal with you, so the rest of the fight will stay 4v4. And most good bunker or 1v1 builds certainly wouldn’t ever die to you (lol no Executioner). So you’re essentially wasting your time on a point that keeps ticking for the enemy. Even if you do kill the defender and take the point, you’re destined to lose the point during any later fights that ensue because you can’t contest it effectively, and must kill the enemy to have any chance of taking it back.
This is just a woefully inefficient process and pretty much any of the good far point assaulter/roamer builds can do your job much better (including S/D Thief).
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great build to watch and play, and he certainly plays it very well, but the Stealth mechanic really needs a rework for any build based so heavily on it to be viable in the conquest meta.
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Wow this was amazingly informative. Really appreciate the time you guys took to put this together.
I haven’t touched sPvP in a while now for much of the same reasons discussed in the interview. Build variety and viability is definitely in a horrible place for Thieves at the moment.
Builds that make heavy use of Stealth and related mechanics such as Stealth Attacks and related traits (consisting of a large majority of the Thief’s build repertoire) give up the ability to effectively contest points, which makes them completely unviable in high-level sPvP. Yet the constant Stealth related QQ from the mindless masses from WvW and sPvP hotjoin scrubs has already resulted in the extension of Revealed by 33% (which is still not yet reverted in sPvP where Stealth needs the most help), and will soon result in further decreasing the viability of Stealth in the form of enemy-induced Revealed.
I would like to ask for Ningyou’s opinion on the prospect of possibly removing the Invisibility aspect of Stealth altogether (call it something different) in return for the ability to contest points. The user would still be untargettable by single-target skills, but can still be hit by AoE’s, Cleaves, and non-targeted projectiles, and would remain clearly visible throughout the duration. Let AI continue to treat Thieves in this state as if they were Invisible as before, to retain the mechanic’s utility in PvE and improve its viability against AI-heavy builds in sPvP.
I feel this idea is worth experimenting with, because in my humble opinion, the entire Stealth mechanic will never truly be viable as a mechanic to build around for as long as the Stealth state itself precludes contesting points. I’m also hoping the removal of Invisibility will bring a slightly more civilized tone to the balance “debate” in the forums and elsewhere that forced ANet’s hand in nerfing Stealth to this sorry state to begin with.
I would very much appreciate any input a Thief player in the high-level competitive scene can offer on this idea.
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I’m more curious about what streaming software ANet usually uses for these.
My computer can run GW2 fine most of the time, but recording/streaming quality and performance is usually pretty bad with XSplit.
Here’s what the Shortbow offers:
Point blank Cluster Bomb spam is probably the highest AoE DPS, and without doubt the best blast finisher in the game.
Reliable, chainable (end-to-end evade frames), on-demand evade that also cripples and repositions.
AoE poison field with fast activation time for poisoning heals if you don’t have an interrupt ready.
Almost instant, chainable 900 range teleport for chase and escape, also has blind for securing stomps.
It’s by far my favorite weapon in the game across all professions.
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I’ve wanted something like this for quite a while.
Not just for Thief but for most other classes too. 5s cooldown on weapon swap would make combat a lot more enjoyable from the added flexibility.
I would actually like to see every class rebalanced to use the Thief’s initiative system.
It’s a rather daunting task but requiring active resource management would definitely introduce a baseline level of risk/cost vs reward for every skill.
All this hate…
I honestly wouldn’t mind if they completely take away the Invisibility aspect of Stealth just to stop all this irrational hate toward Thief as a profession.
Maybe change its name to Shadow form (or preferably something less cheesy sounding), give it a cool Grenth-like black aura, and make it so that while it’s active mobs behave as if we’re invisible to keep its utility in PvE.
As long as they keep the rest of the mechanic the same (Stealth attacks, trait bonuses, etc), and give it some other kind of bonus to either damage, mobility, or survivability to make up for the loss of invisibility, I honestly think this could be a worthwhile overhaul. In fact, if the loss of invisibility could mean that we can actually contest points while it’s active, I’d be all for it even if we don’t get any other bonuses to make up for the loss.
With the conservative nature of ANet’s approach to balance, though, I doubt an overhaul like this could ever happen.
So I recommend all the haters out there to try out a Thief and learn how to deal with it, and see exactly why Stealth is not even considered viable in team sPvP, where all the high-level play is.
If you can’t do that, I suggest picking up another game, because Invisibility will probably be with us for quite some time. Not because it’s a great mechanic, but rather simply because ANet isn’t going to change it anytime soon.
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Don’t forget LITERALLY no AoE’s asides from the 3 target cleave from Spear…
Ok, maybe not if you count Throw Gunk… But come on…
Nobody in the world uses Sick ’em.
Get over it and if applied to you shadow step away. Our ability to disengage whenever we want is too strong and it is a nice debuff to D/P nabs.I like it.
Think about it for a moment, d/p will be effected the LEAST of all stealth sets. d/d-s/d-p/d all rely on consistent stealth rotations for damage/condi/cc/heals/cleanse they are visible enough to easily target them and force MORE revealed on them. d/p stays in stealth most of a fight and is not targetable, sic em is a target reliant ability. You cant target whats perma-stealthed. This change will further knock down the less viable d/d-p/d-s/d sets and not even touch d/p. This is the wrong change to make if you want to knock perma stealth down a couple pegs. I’m guessing they DONT want to hurt permastealth. Every nerf for the last year has not only left perma stealth alone, but even made it MORE viable, by nerfing every other single set we have
This point is worth repeating.
Perma-Stealth is a broken mechanic that needs to be removed from the game, but implementing Revealed as a counter from other Professions is not the way to accomplish this, and in fact won’t accomplish much at all besides severely limiting the viability of other builds that make use of Stealth as it is intended.
Evilapprentice and I both ended up posting this alternative in different forums:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Modified-Anti-Stealth-Suggestion/first
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Counter-Invisibility-not-Stealth/first
But as you said, even with something like the above implemented for other classes, regular Thieves who use Stealth sparingly will be disproportionately impacted and Perma-Stealth Thieves would be barely affected at all.
D/P perma-stealth can be easily fixed without impacting other builds by making Infusion of Shadow not able to proc while already Stealthed.
I still firmly believe that once this is implemented, Stealth as a mechanic will be in a good place in terms of balance (asides from the 4s Revealed in sPvP).
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I absolutely love this feature, and have been using it extensively since the Beta’s. However, it could definitely use some polish.
Here are some of my suggestions for improvements and bug reports (in no particular order):
1. Battle music in sPvP fades out to silence as we approach any Conquest Point… VERY anti-climatic. Would enjoy sPvP a lot more if this wasn’t the case.
2. Crafting playlist doesn’t work at all.
3. LA plays Ambient playlist instead of City.
4. Give us more playlist options for Scenarios that are not yet covered (Defeated and Dungeon, for instance).
5. Allow us to override currently hard-coded playlists like the ones in Dungeons (CoF theme gets really old if you run it daily), Southsun, and certain Living/Personal Story themes.
6. Allow us to adjust/disable hard-coded silence/volume reduction for certain game mechanics (Death Shroud, Downed state), and areas (Orr).
7. Have the MainMenu playlist extended until the loading screen ends to make it last longer than the typical 1-5 seconds. Having to stare at a static background is bad enough, why give us silence as well?
8. Pause and resume the current track instead of starting from the beginning of the next track when the playlist changes from ambient -> battle -> ambient, nighttime -> battle -> nighttime, etc.
9. Allow us to choose whether each playlist is to be randomized, randomized after first track, or played in-order.
Just to emphasize, I like most of the tracks you guys put into the game. However, everything gets old eventually if you listen to it for thousands of hours as you would in an MMO.
This is why I appreciate Custom Playlists so much, and hope you’ll be able to implement the bug-fixes and improvements I mentioned and give us choice to replace currently hard-coded tracks.
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Please send me an invite too if you still have room. =)
Maguuma has never had a kill yet as far as I know.
At off-peak times it tends to be emptier than most overflows, so you guys should have no problems getting in.
I have work at these off-peak times, but I really want to see this done on my own server at least once, even if I’m not there to experience it.
If nothing else I’m hoping it might bring back some of the serious players from our own server from guesting 24/7 for Teq kills. =/
I like mixing endgame and mid-level content together. I like that as a mostly solo player because you can happen across interesting, not every-day fights.
Look past the overflow for just one moment, because the overflow is as big a problem for everyone involved.
In a few months, I as a solo player leveling in Sparkfly Fen can come across an organized group staging for this encounter. I can decide to hang around take part in the encounter, too. That’s GOOD. You wouldnt have that if it was instanced.
Right now, I, as a solo player leveling in Sparkfly Fen, can come across an organized group staging for this encounter. I can decide to hang around and take part in the encounter too by manning one of the turrets. I will spam 1 at mobs for the entire fight because that makes me feel bad-kitten and I don’t know any better, and effectively cut down everybody’s chance of success by a good 1/6th. A few more people like me on the turrets and we’ll have bone walls popping up every few seconds! And that is GOOD.
?
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Culling only got removed in pve and wvw, so yeah i’ve never seen a thief get the full 4 secs of revealed. I see black lines (thief pops out of stealth), wait 2 secs and then i see the thief. And about thief nerfs, most of these nerfs were very needed, especially the early ones. If you do not acknowledge this, you are obviously trolling. In the rangers case, not so much. Lowering shortbow dmg, lowering pet dmg, zephyrs speed nerf, quickness nerf (rangers have easiest acces to quickness), natural healing nerf (doesnt heal pet anymore, might be bugged) which now only heals for 133 (for player once every 3s) which is worse than regeneration with no healing power, hardly worth it to be a top tier trait. And if you think larcenous strike and flanking strikes dmg is bad, checkout ranger’s sword dmg,… And I seriously doubt sickem is going to inflict 10 s of revealed, probably would just trigger the revealed, so like ‘4’ s of revealed… I doubt it is going to make a difference…
Culling was never in sPvP to begin with.
Agreed.
Out of the 3 game modes, Stealth is least viable in sPvP, yet it’s also the only mode where this completely unjustified nerf has not be reverted.
It really is about time to change that.
I’d like an invite too. Thanks. =)
Nobody from Maguuma here, eh?
Not surprising. The lowest I’ve seen him here is a bit over 60%. For some servers it just ain’t gonna happen.
Honestly, I would also like to see the timer replaced with reasonable failure conditions. Failing just because the rest of your server/overflow can’t DPS hard enough is disheartening to say the least.
If there absolutely must be a timer, please consider increasing the timer to 30 minutes. 15 minutes honestly does not feel epic enough for a dragon fight that is intended to scale into the hundreds, and a longer timer would give struggling servers a bit of a fighting chance.
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If RPers can do this, so can you.
(Tarnished Coast)
TC is the “unofficial RP server”. I also RP. It’s a joke, stop being kitten.
I think at least SOME of the people in that screenshot are acting out of character. =P
If Anet absolutely must introduce anti-stealth skills so that the WvW zerg-scrubs (no one in tPvP has trouble with it, stealth isn’t even viable) who cbf learning how to counter a highly counterable mechanic then I agree, this suggestion is infinitely better than a straight up reveal, even if that reveal is on a long CD and lasts a short duration.
You realize Stealth in TPvP is weaker then WvW right?
Revealed last a full second less in World vs World because Thieves were whining they were to weak.
It’s really baffling that they chose to keep the Revealed duration increase in sPvP only, where Stealth was already less viable than in both WvW and PvE…
Not to mention the effort it takes in sPvP to unlearn the muscle memory developed by the fluent Stealth attack + full auto-chain rotation in other modes.
In my thread someone posted this:
What if detecting an invisible enemy was a boon on the detector and not on the invisible person. So, for example, someone who is invisible would appear (to the detecting person only) like one of the assassins in COF p2.
The invisible person would still get all the bonuses from being invisible (condition removal, boon generation, etc.).
It would therefore, take some coordination to track down the thief. “He’s to you’re right, left, behind you, he’s running away”
I think this method could work just as well as what evilapprentice and I suggested. And might be slightly less convoluted semantically than allowing the Thief to be in both the Stealth state and the Detected state simultaneously.
More testing will have to go into this to determine which method would be the better approach. But both are certainly much more fair to the Thief than simply giving everybody access to Revealed application.
Considering that along with the possible application of reveal—similar to applying a condition—I think stealth/reveal could be reimplemented as a boon/condition. I haven’t thought about the consequences of this, but the way they are interacting (application/stripping) is already similar. Also, stealing/removing stealth is impossible unless a target has both stealth and revealed, thus this would not break the mechanic.
Now, onto your suggestion to implement Revealed as a condition rather than an effect. This would make for a rather drastic change, and will definitely have much bigger implications on balance than you might have considered, due to the simple fact that conditions can be cleared.
Consider this: right now Revealed is used basically as a soft cooldown for Stealth attacks in order to balance their effects around a specific time interval. If Revealed can be cleared like any other condition, a Thief specced with multiple condi-cleanses (or if teammates are specced for group condi-cleanse) can then use a Stealth attack, condi-cleanse, Stealth, and then Stealth attack again, and repeat for multiple times without any restrictions on timing. Think of the overwhelming burst that would come from this when used with Backstab, the length of the immobilize that will come from Surprise Shot, or the daze-lock that would come from Tactical Strike. All of these skills will have to be revamped to support this change, in addition Stealth related trait effectiveness and ICD’s, the Thief’s access to condi-cleanses, team condi-cleanse support availability, the impact that these changes and yet another cover condi would have on the already condi-dominated meta, and probably many more factors that you and I could not even begin to imagine.
Is such an overhaul worthwhile considering that introducing another targeted effect that applies a counter to the invisibility aspect of Stealth would achieve the desired effect without all the far-reaching consequences? I would say no. And I believe this is what evilapprentice was trying to communicate to you as well in his reply.
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Correct me if I’m misunderstanding:
You are proposing that potential skills that apply reveal like Sic ’Em instead apply another debuff that only nullifies the invisible aspect of stealth. With your proposition, a thief can use stealth skills and gain the benefits of the SA tree while being visible as a result of Sic ’Em/etc. The integration of this would be 3 states of being concerning stealth: invisibility, revealed (no invisibility or access to abilities of SA traits and stealth skills like backstab), and your proposition (no invisibility but can access abilities of SA traits and stealth skills).This is almost exactly the same as the other forum post (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Counter-Invisibility-not-Stealth/first), except that he replaces revealed with the new state he proposed, Detected, completely.
The problem with both propositions is that there is only one aspect of stealth: invisibility.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stealth
There is no room for interpretation regarding this game’s definition of stealth. If you want benefits of the SA tree while being targeted by potential stealth-breaking skills, then the SA tree is what needs to be revamped, and based around an alternative instead of stealth.
The potential Sic ’Em’s reveal capability does indeed invalidate many of the effects of the SA line. However:
-It’s only 4 seconds.
-It can be negated if used incorrectly (wrong target or no target).
-Sic ’Em has a mid-long cd.
-The thief has many options to work around the short reveal (evade, teleport, LOS, blind, stuns, etc.)Considering that along with the possible application of reveal—similar to applying a condition—I think stealth/reveal could be reimplemented as a boon/condition. I haven’t thought about the consequences of this, but the way they are interacting (application/stripping) is already similar. Also, stealing/removing stealth is impossible unless a target has both stealth and revealed, thus this would not break the mechanic.
Looks like you misunderstood my post. I was suggesting the exact same idea suggested in this thread.
I mentioned that Revealed is necessary as a self-regulation mechanism in order to keep the power of Stealth attacks like Backstab/Sneak Attack/Tactical Strike. Replacing it with the Detected effect completely would mean Thieves can go back to the early Beta days of Backstabbing multiple times within seconds, which was completely ridiculous.
However allowing others to apply Revealed would make it a hard-counter to the entire Stealth mechanic, including utility effects provided by Stealth related traits and offensive options like Stealth attacks. If people are having trouble countering invisibility in its current state, then a counter for invisibility should be developed to help them with that, but it should be tailored to the invisibility aspect alone, not in the form of a hard-counter to the entire mechanic.
I agree with evilapprentice in that trying to quantify the availability and potency of mechanic-specific hard-counters is rather pointless. All other factors held equal, the very existence of hard-counters for a specific mechanic makes the mechanic inferior to others as a build choice. For now, ANet is only planning on introducing Revealed on a single, fairly underused skill, Sic Em, but they also clearly indicated that they are planning to introduce it to more skills.
How viable will Stealth be when this hard-counter has been introduced to enough skills that every class has access to some way of disabling the mechanic for x-duration? Being a burden to your team in an important teamfight just because you’re heavily specced into Stealth, and enemies happened to have a few skills on their bar to negate your entire investment for a key moment in the fight, is a risk that Thief players on high-level teams simply cannot tolerate. This is decidedly a detrimental effect to build variety, whereby the focus is to have multiple equally viable builds that the player can choose from.
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I also agree that 2 boons against certain classes is too good, while against others it’s necessary. How about make it so it steals 1 boon and steals another if the target has more than 4 or 5 boons on them? If not I do kind of like the health steal idea, it’d make it more useful in PvE considering there aren’t too many enemies that actually use boons, although I do love using S/D against dredge.
Larcenous Strike (1-2 Initiative.)
Stab your foe and steal one boon, steal a second boon if the target has more than four (or five) boons on them.
Damage: 365
Range: 130
Unblockable
This sounds great.
Boon hate should be implemented in a way that scales exponentially with the severity of the boon stacking on your target, as to punish boon spamming and not unfairly deny boon access to builds that don’t overuse them.
I would go farther and say steal 1 boon if 3 or less, steal 3 boons if more than 3.
Either that or make it target specific defensive boons like protection, stability, retal, regen, etc to make Thieves better bunker-busters.
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