Guild Wars 2

Domey.9804:

much exaggeration in this thread
stealth is not broken, not poorly designed. the problem is 1 trait…infusion of shadow…give it a internal cd of 3sec and evrything will be good.

This is probably the best way to alleviate the complaints, or make it so it can’t trigger if you have the stealth buff. I’m not sure which would be easier/more dependable to code.

Sanduskel.1850:

Imagi.4561:

Sanduskel.1850:

Maugetarr.6823:

Sanduskel.1850:

i play a thief and I agree that stealth is poorly designed. it’s op’d to be able to remain stealthed the entire time while attacking. that’s while I don’t spec permastealth. it’s for easymode scrubs.

You keep using that word but I don’t think it means what you think it means.
I forget who originally linked this a month or so ago, but I would say your constant attacking of other thieves is a projection of what you are onto someone else.

The Scrub:
http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/intermediates-guide.html

well if you have to rely on perma stealth, you wouldn’t recognize a true scrub.

I don’t particularly care for the stealth playstyle, but I don’t see how it is any more or less valid than evasion. It’s just a different way to play.

it’s much much easier to play that evasion. honest thieves admit as much. decent thieves consider it the scrub easymode spec.

Really? Honest and decent thieves admit as much? Both sets have their strengths and weaknesses. In fact it’s much harder to take down a boon bunker using D/P than S/D. You might actually see honest and decent thieves running around with both sets to make up for what the other is lacking. Everyone thinks that their class/build takes more skill to use. Warriors can wreck perma-stealth builds now by equipping berserker stance. BTW, I run around with S/D as my build because of the shortcomings of D/P. That would be the reason I linked the definition of scrub to you because you seem to think it’s just easy mode, but it’s pretty easily countered by skilled players. S/D is overall the stronger set, but keep telling yourself that you are better because you use evasion instead of stealth. Why don’t you try using both at the same time and see which one you end up relying on more.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Ruggan.4102:

I wonder how many of the people calling for a stealth nerf have actually listened to what they are saying? On the one hand, they are calling stealth OP because supposedly, a thief is nigh unstoppable because of stealth and can kill with a single flick of a bugger after going into stealth… and then in the same breath they claim its OP because the thief can use it to run away if the other person they are fighting is too strong for them to beat up…. UMMM which is it all… are thieves unstoppable perma-stealth gods or can we be beat and have to rely on our stealth to get us out of sticky situations?? Last I checked, gods and mega super awesome OP demi-omnipotent megaliths dont need to run away… in fact, shouldnt it be the other classes that have to run because of the OPness of thieves due to stealth

Its BOTH.

Far to strong when going offensive with it and far to strong when going defensive with it, Name another mechanic that allows such gameplay?

You stealth up to someone who can not prepare due to the fact that stealth was spammed to get to them. You bash buttons hoping they will die (normally BS and then HS, HS, HS, SH….) and then either stealth and run because they some how managed to survive and put you on defense

That very moment you use the SAME mechanic that you used to GET to them in stealth to get away from the which can cure conditions, regain health, regain initiative (maybe not all of them but some at the very least) now you have full initiative and the other person is stuck with cool downs that they likely had to burn to survive your first attack

Now you can go back in knowing that they had to use so many defensive cool downs that it should be an easier fight and it will just be rinse and repeat until you kill the person or they managed to chain stun/interrupt you to get you down.

You REALLY think that sort of mechanic is okay in this game!?

Stealth from the start should have been a mechanic linked to a FEW select skills so that it could be used as a “right time” sort of thing. NOT one that you can spam before combat, not one that you can use every 3 seconds in combat and not one that you can spam to escape.

Except that as a burst build which it seems you’re referring to you’ve wasted all your initiative with the hs spam (ineffective against most experienced players) so you either use blinding powder or shadow refuge to leave. Blinding powder will get you 3(4) seconds of stealth while SR will give your opponent 4 seconds to melt you inside of it or knock you out of it. You probably are going to have to burn shadowstep the utility to get some distance in between you and the person now trying to kill you meaning that you’ve just blown 2 cooldowns on 50-60 second times. It seems you’re in the same boat as the person you tried to attack.

Sanduskel.1850:

i play a thief and I agree that stealth is poorly designed. it’s op’d to be able to remain stealthed the entire time while attacking. that’s while I don’t spec permastealth. it’s for easymode scrubs.

You keep using that word but I don’t think it means what you think it means.
I forget who originally linked this a month or so ago, but I would say your constant attacking of other thieves is a projection of what you are onto someone else.

The Scrub:
http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/intermediates-guide.html

Mathematically speaking, healing signet only becomes more powerful than healing surge at 25 seconds into a fight assuming you haven’t been poisoned at any point during the fight.

Base value = 392 HPS
(392health/sec)*(25seconds) = 9200 health

Base heal for healing surge = 9280 on a 30 second cooldown. So healing signet becomes more powerful than healing surge at the 26-29 second range assuming you weren’t poisoned during the fight which would have dropped the heal for however many seconds to only 2/3 effectiveness.

Well this sounds familiar. Last time it was a thread about a new thief build that only took damage in the range of <20 per hit and that it was an easy build that thieves even showed him how to accomplish. I believe the mods deleted it after just about the only responses he got were pictures of tin foil hats.

zencow.3651:

They could just make Revealed last for 4 seconds in WvW like in sPvP so thieves have to be more commited to the fight after they engage.

but WvW is PvE soooooo~

They did this and it lasted for a month before they reverted it. It hit balanced thieves way harder than burst thieves because it was tantamount to reducing burst output/control/defense the thief had by 33%. This affected spvp less where burst wasn’t as high so the thief wouldn’t be killed as fast, but on wvw that extra second made thieves easy targets. It also made the class feel extremely clunky due to revealed ending halfway through a second auto chain rather than fitting neatly into 1.

Agreed with the other 2 here. Don’t take our words for it, its about how the class feels to you. A couple of hours in the mist is minor compared to the time to level. Also race can be important for both classes. Make sure the one you pick doesn’t have animations/sayings that will drive you crazy eventually.

I have to say, a S/D thief might suit you better than a warrior. While warriors have pretty decent flat out speed, thieves have better in combat mobility. Think of it as sort of the other half of what you’ve been playing. Instead of hiding in plain sight, you show them nothing. The other end of denial magic. Don’t get me wrong. The warrior is a lot of fun, but the description of what you enjoy fits thief slightly better.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Maugetarr.6823:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

No other weapon set has access to this. Even if it cost all our Init, it’s still there, available for the Thief when needed. And using SR cost 2 Init, not 5. IF is used for CC not Condition Removal.

I just want to take issue with the condition removal on weapon that you said no other class has access to. Necro has 2 different weapons that transfer conditions: OH dagger and Staff.

OH dagger is sort of funny as it has to bounce for it’s full condition transfer, but it can transfer up to 3 conditions to up to enemies hit by it on an 18 second cooldown. as someone else mentioned, without traits we gain 1 initiative every 1.33 seconds. Un-traited it takes us 20 seconds to regain that initiative and all of our other weapon skills are useless in the meantime. So the necro weapon has a better effect for the cost. As for the staff, it transfers conditions to enemies in the radius on a 25 second cooldown. I do not know the limit to the number of conditions transferred, but if you trait into adept tier death magic you can lower the cooldown to 20 seconds, so if it removes up to 3, then it equals our sword 2 in functionality. If it removes more than 3, then it has better functionality without even needing to trait.

You seems to misunderstood the context of the discussion.

I didn’t say “no other class;” I said “no other weapon set” within the kitten nals of Thieves.

Oh, well then. If other classes have access on multiple weapons, perhaps we should be buffing other thief weapon sets up to the level of S/D rather than talking about how S/D is too strong. Compared to other classes, its one of the 2 fully fleshed out weapon sets we have.

Sanduskel.1850:

What part of perma is difficult for you?

I’m asking you for your judgement on when stealth becomes perma since you’re so eager to attack thieves who use it, I would like a clear and concise definition. Who is a scrub? Who isn’t a scrub? What is the exact breakover point?

Well, I main thief, but I love hammer, axe/shield, and longbow (switching to what the event requires) when I do play on my war. I’ve taken that combo into fractals and it works fine. I don’t run in an optimised group for fractals (my usual group is 1 guard, 1 condi necro, 1 dps war, a pug, and me on my bunker war/thief/engi depending on my mood that day). The hammer, in my experience in fractals, is pretty useful against trash mobs which are immune to blind and can start to hurt at higher levels. Stunning a group to set up your glass teammate (also running unsuspecting foe) for 100b is a lot of fun. Play what you like. The game is supposed to be fun.

Sanduskel.1850:

Nice job demonstrating a lack of game mechanic comprehension. There is a world of difference. Decent thieves know that and choose the challenging path.

So how long does stealth need to last before it’s permastealth? If there’s a world of difference, night and day, exactly how long do I need to be in stealth before I’m considered a permastealth scrub?

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Walker.3056:

Your use of the words on demand is just wrong here buddy…

Your respond is an obvious reaction coming from some one who do not use S/D and your respond to my points is evidence of this. You seem to not understand what “on demand” means for an S/D set.

-Condition removal ( u need to waste 5 initiative to remove 1 cond)

No other weapon set has access to this. Even if it cost all our Init, it’s still there, available for the Thief when needed. And using SR cost 2 Init, not 5. IF is used for CC not Condition Removal.

-Evade on demand ( IS evade is crap whats good on evades build is the 15 trait in Trickery + sig of agility, any thief build can use that)

Whether it is good or crap doesn’t change the fact that it is available for S/D. You have no counter-argument here.

-Cripple on demand (any off hand dagger thief or has it.)

What’s your point? The list I made is not for individual properties of the weapon set, but it is to be perceived as a whole. S/D #2 + #4 gives a Thief a powerful CC skills on demand.

-Stealth on demand (LOL CnD is stealth on demand? only if ur target is a dummy, for example d/p get stealth much easier depending on the build)

The fact is, Stealth is on demand. Again, no counter-argument here from you.

-Boon strip on demand ( 5 initiative 2 boons IF people cant dodge, Bountyfull thief trait or whatever its called is a much more reliable boon strip skill)

This is the type of comment coming from those who doesn’t use S/D who simply have no idea what they are talking about. If you don’t have a slightest idea on how this works, then you’re at a lost. I won’t even try to explain it to you since your purpose is simply to mock, not to counter my arguments.

- Daze on demand (LMAO… the dazze from S/D comes from stealth CnD 6 init + a backstab… yea.. totaly on demand. pistol off hand much better.)

Again, another sign of someone who doesn’t understand the weapon set.

- Blind on demand (LMAO again… pistol off hand or d/p skill 3 come on you are not even trying to think here…)

Again, you have no idea what you’re talking about here. If you don’t know how this works, please stop responding.

-It has the highest auto-attack damage, albeit slow, it’s high. (Dagger AUTO attack chain got higher and faster DPS the only thing is thats single target, if u dont belive go and test it.)

Pure non-sense.

…just to name the reasons I can think of from the top of my head. (try again plz)

A D/P set can have access to all those stuffs but the cripple, and on many of those aspects its much easier and better than a S/D set.

Really? So where’s your CC? Oh wait, you have none. What about Condition Removal? Shadow Return to get our of tight spot? Here’s an easy one: how about evade? Boon Strip? No?

Well that sucks for you.

Your conclusion on the other hand great, ANet should really give us attention, think about any changes before doing it and not just listen to so many crys out there.

Yet you still fail to acknowledge why S/D is getting all the attention. I love this weapon set as it was before the FS/LS change, but they simply broke it with their “creative” fix. You can mock my post all you want, but you either have no idea what S/D is all about or you’re simply in denial.

Besides it’s so obvious that you don’t use S/D since you promote D/P every chance you get.

I just want to take issue with the condition removal on weapon that you said no other class has access to. Necro has 2 different weapons that transfer conditions: OH dagger and Staff.

OH dagger is sort of funny as it has to bounce for it’s full condition transfer, but it can transfer up to 3 conditions to up to enemies hit by it on an 18 second cooldown. as someone else mentioned, without traits we gain 1 initiative every 1.33 seconds. Un-traited it takes us 20 seconds to regain that initiative and all of our other weapon skills are useless in the meantime. So the necro weapon has a better effect for the cost. As for the staff, it transfers conditions to enemies in the radius on a 25 second cooldown. I do not know the limit to the number of conditions transferred, but if you trait into adept tier death magic you can lower the cooldown to 20 seconds, so if it removes up to 3, then it equals our sword 2 in functionality. If it removes more than 3, then it has better functionality without even needing to trait.

Obscure One.4357:

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Obscure One.4357:

Shemsu.8721:

Obscure One.4357:

OGDeadHead.8326:

Dee Jay.2460:

Stealth does not make Thieves disappear.

Tell that to my ranger pet – thieves have this core mechanic that totally and fully puts the rangers’ core mechanic out of the game.

You see…this is what I’m talking about.

Stealth is not a core mechanic of thieves. You remove thieves from the game and stealth is still there. You remove rangers from the game and pets aren’t in the game. See the difference?

Fundamental difference between core mechanics of thief and core mechanics of stealth. Stealth is not a core class mechanic anymore than the Burning condition is a Guardians core class mechanic.

Just run “Sic Em!” after the up coming patch and your problems will be solved…well other than the fact ANet has yet to make Rangers as viable as literally any other class outside of sPvP because they’re seemingly obsessed with halfassing class mechanics.

Stealth attacks are a unique mechanic EXCLUSIVE to thieves. no other classes attacks change when in stealth, despite half the classes in game having stealth access. In addition we have an entire traitline dedicated to stealth. So yeah I’d say stealth is pretty built in to thief CORE design

Unique mechanics built into the class that’re exclusive to the class are exactly the thing we should be talking about. If you notice, we are in compete agreement on the subject. Stealth is not a mechanic of thieves, thieves use stealth more frequently than every other class, they have mechanics that rely on it, but it’s not their core mechanic. My Engineer can’t use Stealth Attacks, nor has the ability to trait to remove conditions or heal in stealth just as a thief can’t use tool belt skills or trait to be immune to conditions below 25% hp. Core mechanics of stealth are being targeted far too often when it’s not, has not, and likely will continue not to be the issue.

Thief core mechanics revolve around stealth, not vice versa. You fix the thief you fix the problem. Again, if thieves just magically disappear from the game Stealth mechanics will not magically disappear as well. The class needs major work and everyone is pointing at something that isn’t the problem.

Obscure is correct stealth is not broken, but I disagree on it not being a mechanic of the thief. Almost all thief builds rely on stealth to allow any form of damage mitigation and viability, excluding S/d, but people are qqing about that so it will be nerfed soon. The thief class is not broken. Should they look at the trait allocation and make it slightly more structured on how you spec to have the damage and stealth both being utilised without blindly nerfing the class to ground.

You just gave me a glimmer of hope that this may become a productive discussion. Your very nearly seeing my point of view.

My Ranger can gain stealth, my Engineer can gain stealth, and Mesmers can gain stealth. These are not core mechanics of the classes just as it’s not a core mechanic of the Thief. Hell a few blasts in an ally supplied smoke field and any one can stealth. Since the Thief class leans on stealth like a crutch it’s easy to fall into the trap of seeing it as a core mechanic since outside of it build viability drops dramatically. This is the problem. The class is being criticised and balanced around a mechanic that is not unique to it (I.E. core) and that is a failure in class design.

Then non stealth based traits and damage would need to be adjusted to take into account the loss of stealth. While its true that stealth isn’t unique to the thief, it has core mechanics based on stealth as well as entire traitline. Acrobatics needs to be buffed more than SA needs to be nerfed.

dDuff.3860:

Sir Vincent III, so stun is not a CC?
Dude you just make no sense in any thief’s thread, that is not first time when you sounds like crab – cluck-cluck-cluck!
Thief just require 15 Acro trait reworked to give might on dodge, and minor trait should become major from master line. This is either rework and nerf to particulary S/D and other dodgespam thiefs, but this will make sense?

Why does feline grace need to be changed? It really only has any advantage over vigor when combined with vigor. Both guardians and mesmers have vigor on crit in their adept tier of traits, so it seems that a class built to dodge more would have a slightly better version in it’s master tier. Also might on dodge is already available on the adept tier, why move it?

Stooperdale.3560:

That would get you started ok and you can see what you need after that. Don’t bother with the soldiers yet.

“Yet.” I’m in complete agreement with this. The soldiers gear that I’m currently still collecting from hotw is my 4th or 5th set. I should have mentioned that. @ OP, I don’t know how new you are to your thief, but its a good idea to have multiple sets for it for when unexpected balance changes occur. While my trinkets usually don’t change, my armor often does to make up for the changes in a build. GL with fractal running, and p.s. you should carry 2 pistols, 2 daggers, a sword and a shortbow with you to tackle fractals so you can accommodate any engagement you might face. You can work up to that though. Seems like a promising start.

Obscure One.4357:

Oh no this got moved to the thief forum…that’ll really encourage a rational discussion on stealth mechanics…
Heads up thieves we already have:
- “your bad, learn to play”
- “thief is easy to counter.”
- “stealth isn’t broken”

And a few other equally shortsighted arguments you folks are apt to making. But I suppose you can’t tell a troll not to troll any more than you can tell an idiot not to be an idiot…

Well gosh, when a blanket statement/straw man about the advice I’m going to give you is the first thing I see, that makes me want to be particularly helpful. Don’t worry, you have a few freinds in this forum. Burnfall will come along soon commending you on your brilliant insight into the Truth of OP thief mechanics and Favoritism. The mods probably move threads like this to the thief forum because they grow weary of seeing generalizations made by people who do not play the class.

Thieves actually bring amazing utility at higher level fractals. If you want just DPS, a warrior may suit you better as they bring roughly equivalent DPS, but they won’t get 1 shot until higher levels and their attacks cleave greatly helping with trash mobs.

First off, the build I use lately is 0/30/20/20/0 zerker trinkets and power stat armor (zerk/soldier/valk depending on how tired I am). Gaining health in stealth isn’t really worth it as the 1k health you’ll get typically won’t save you from a hit in anything fractal 20 and over. I typically have Shadowstep, Shadow Refuge, and Smokescreen equipped for most encounters. Smokescreen is probably my favorite skill in fractals as it will blind melee and block projectiles. When traited (SA I) it has extremely high up time. SB should almost always be equipped as your secondary for its combos, defensive capabilities, and the ability to get to your teammates faster if they go down

Daendur got it right on the grawl and dredge. During the bomb part on the dredge, you can plant single bombs as a time and shadow trap out. It may seem slow the first couple of times, but its faster than wiping and I’ve only seen 1 other method that was almost as effective requiring 2 hammer guards to prevent the dredge from picking up the bombs when you plant more than 1. During the grawl fractal, BV+Sword/X is really nice for interrupting the shaman. I switch BV out during the second boss fight for Daggerstorm to pull aggro from the lava elementals. It will reflect their attacks and the bouncing daggers will hot the shaman knocking off layers of the shell. When he becomes enraged, smokescreen will save your group from getting 1 shot.
The thief can be particularly helpful during the harpy fractal. With SA I and V traited, you can stealth your entire group through both jumping sections. Start with smokescreen and drop 6 cluster bombs into it. When you get about 1/3 of the way up, drop SR on the group, then continue. At 2/3 of the way up, drop smokescreen and repeat the CB’ing. This is especially helpful when the fractal is your 3rd and your pug is frustrated.

It’s not fair ‘cause thief fire works don’t have cooldowns!

Excalibur.9748:

The QQ will not stop with paralization sigil nerf.

The warriors will move to condi bunker spec, and then the QQ will shift to healing signet nerf.

Healing signet will then get nerfed, and THEN the QQ “may” die down.

Probably not though. As you’ve seen on the thief, every spec will be slowly toned down till they are nothing compared to what they once were. The remaining specs which are now stronger by comparison will start to receive QQ and the die-hards who still love their original spec will eventually hit a player a few months later starting another QQ thread about a spec that’s already been nerfed. The only way a class can really lose the OP tag the community gives it is if it no longer has any viable spec for a couple of months. Then it can he buffed to the point of mediocrity.

Well you didn’t qualify it before. All you said was crit chance is always better than crit damage. On all 3 of my 80’s, including the engineer, I only have 1 trait that procs on crit: the 20% chance to gain 1 initiative on my thief. I don’t like leaving things up to random chance (too much so at least), so I’m much more interested in the breakover point on this chart.

lchan.2169:

why do people go for critical damage over chance. Critical chance is always better then critical damage.

Faux Sheaux.6179:

I was wrong. This is the most layman I can put it.

• Anything above or to the right of the ladder will get more benefit from adding CC than CD
• Anything in the ladder gets the same befenfit from adding CC as it will from adding CD
• Anything below or to the left of the ladder will get more benefit from adding CD than CC

You will also notice that for any given sum CC+CD, the boxed values are the maximum amounts you can get for all combinations of CC and CD (all values diagonal to the box running from the bottom-left to top-right).

Cheers.

From the ranger forums a few months ago

Sanduskel.1850:

DoctorOverlord.8620:

Zero Day.2594:

DoctorOverlord.8620:

Adding more anti-stealth is an improvement. And good to hear it implied that more is on the way.

It seems like this is always case with any MMO that has used instant invisibility cloaking as their stealth mechanic. The mechanic gets put in and then the game sees a constant series of necessary nerfs in an endless effort to balance it.

Mind explaining how thieves and some mesmer would feel? Any buff’s for them to counter-act over-nerfing? or just beat on one class, without much explanation or re-balancing?

I have a level 80 mesmer and a thief is one of my alts and I still see invsio-stealth as a terrible mechanic in MMOs.

I’m sure that ArenaNet will handle the balancing as best as they can, I’m simply pointing out that every MMO I have seen with this mechanic has been plagued by a constant need to adjust it. This is not the last time we will stealth being tweaked and it will continue as long as GW2 exists.

It is a pity that ArenaNet could not have come up with some alternative to inviso-stealth that worked better without the endless need for tuning.

No other decent MMO has allow perma stealth during combat. ANET should lengthen stealth time out of combat but shut down any stealth once in combat. Good thieves would be fine with that change, trust me.

That would eliminate in combat burst from dagger mainhand, dazing from sword, sneak attack from pistol mainhand, and immobilize from bow. I guess we could all switch to S/P and use auto attack while spamming 3.

Doggie.3184:

Coloxeus.3480:

i wanna see that 8k or 9k+ dmg in spvp! my highest crit % in PvE/WvW is 122% (with food) but in spvp 57% so thats why its possible to do that very high burst dmg in WvW have u seen eviscerate for 15- 16k? and 20k Dmg of warrior’s kill shot!?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoLN18wQlKk

Warrior’s ranged ‘backstap’ you mine as well call it is scary.
Minding my own business fighting a guard when suddenly the majority of my HP just instantly vanishes from a warrior on top of tower. o.O If I wasn’t in soldiers it woulda been a 1shot I’m sure.

Then of course there’s this spvp stuff. I’ve been hit with the evil 20k killshot before too. Not to mention wars speced for regen are almost impossible to kill.

Don’t forget these as well. Not gonna say thief, warrior, or necro is op, but hits like this aren’t unique to the thief:

(watch at 2:48-3:00 but no need to watch much farther than that)

I like the part where a single izerker takes away more than half his health.

Gutts.8791:

Demonts.4593:

Killshot is 1.5 times backstab damage and from range. In a teamfight thieves cant even get a backstab off anyways. Ive played every class in pvp and thief, ele and hgh engineer are by far the hardest. Backstab doesnt even hit that hard. If a warrior woulda done the same thing as the thief with killshot it would been 20k damage instead of 13k.

Good thing it takes about 3 hours to cast then and he’s not in stealth when he’s casting it

Eviscerate has a skill multiplier or 3 while backstab has a multiplier of 2.4. Not arguing if either is overpowered or not. Both (usually) require some sort of setup to land.

Sanduskel.1850:

lethlora.1320:

not going to beef too kitten that line, but i wonder how reducing larcenous strike’s effectiveness by half is a “slight” change.

Sanduskel.1850:

these nerfs are really immaterial. if you want to see real nerfs take a look at what they’ve done to mesmers or rangers. my thief never really felt these nerfs.

then you weren’t using any of the strong skills when they were strong, because some of these nerfs were rather major. dancing dagger is the one I remember being most irked by.

perhaps, but i didn’t need the permastealth crutch.

I’m starting to have serious doubts that you play a thief when others mention builds that have nothing related to permastealth and you always come back to that. Permastealth is relatively recent and really only started appearing after they fixed D/P #3 so it could actually hit things and even more popular after they changed mug since the front end burst was lowered. A lot of these nerfs took place before permastealth was largely utilized which actually pushed thieves into it because it was a much more defensively oriented set. You also talk of stealth as if its permastealth or nothing with little regard to those who use both short term stealth and evasion.

Sanduskel.1850:

that’s fine. it’s your opinion. alll i can say is that i do fine on my thief without perma stealth.

It doesn’t only affect perma stealth though.

Incurafy.6329:

I’m sorry for taking advantage if your inability to counter a basic mechanic.
I’m sorry for using that advantage to Backstsb your glass build for a high amount of damage.
I’m sorry for stealth stomping you.
I’m sorry for jumping on your corpse before laughing until you respawned.
I’m sorry for lying this whole time, who am I kidding? I’m not sorry, I love it!

Demonts.4593:

no. thief (and stealth in general is fine the way it is)

The problem is now classes are going to start getting hard counters to stealth most likely. Since the reasoning was “because people have been asking for it” for giving rangers the ability to reveal thieves instead of “it’ll balance thieves better,” the call will soon be “rangers can reveal a thief, why can’t [profession].” What you said is correct, thieves have good condi removal assuming they stay in stealth for 3+ seconds, but outside of that, the only way to remove conditions even close to that fast takes 10 initiative with the sword. An acrobatics trait in the master or grandmaster tier that could equal the SA minor trait would be nice.

Sanduskel.1850:

no need for petty personal attacks. learn to play without perma stealth as the rest of us have.

What if we use S/D as our main weapon set and still find this a dumb idea?

Arachnid.4062:

-50% stun and condi duration is overpowered.

Dodge builds already have enough immunity simply with evades

Thief already has decent condi clears.

We have alright condi clears but nothing that can keep up with the current meta traitwise outside of SA. Compared to a warrior which can trait cleasing ire in the toughness line or additional condi cleanse in the vitality line tacked onto other skills, we don’t have a lot. This would be a welcome addition (imo) since we have 2 distinct styles of play: stealth and evade (and I know each camp thinks the others are noobs/stupid because that’s not how they think thief should be played) but it would be nice to have dependable (not automatic with an icd) trait-based condi removal in both defensive lines. Hard to catch could easily be replaced with -50% stun duration without becoming OP, and fleet of foot could be modified so that its not limited to weakness and cripple.

Burnfall.9573:

Until No-Effort=Rewards are Compltely Eliminated, once and for all.

Until “slap-on the wrist” -Nerfs" are Completely Eliminated

Until Fair Play Mechanics are Implimented and Enforced.

Until No-Risk Mechanics are Eliminated.

Until Favoritism is Eliminated.

Until Order is Re-Inforced

Until Justice is Served

Once and for all.

Look, we get it. You don’t like thieves and you can’t fight against them. If you tried one out, you know leveled it from 1 to 80 or just used the time that you spend coming here learning the class first hand, you’d find that a lot of thieves are pretty easy to take down. Really. No sarcasm. Give it a try. If you really don’t want to for whatever reason then please stop with the theatrical soapbox writing style. Even if you have valid points you’ll immediately polarize the argument and no one will listen.

Zacchary.6183:

You give us these two traits:

Roll with the Punches (Grandmaster)
-50% stun and condition duration applied to you. Does not stack.

Shake it Off (Master)
Dodging removes a condition.

And in return you guys can nerf stealth more and s/x or w/e.

I like it, but this sounds familiar.

:P

Shake it of is taken though, so they’d have to come up with a new name. Something like cleansing inertia or inertial recovery (like power of inertia and it belongs in the same trait line). Something to bring the acrobatics like up to par with SA. It has a few good traits and a few niche traits, but the line needs to be fleshed out better.

I’m sorry I’ve never taken the time to learn another class so I dont understand your plight

I’m sorry that I have no access to damage mitigation so your constant “miss miss miss” annoys you when I dodge or blind you

I’m sorry I have limited reliable condi removal traits outside of stealth so I have to rely on it

I’m sorry that after a year of the game being out it’s still not obvious what a thief is going to do when they stealth

I’m sorry cloak and dagger isn’t telegraphed enough

I’m sorry that backstab has a slightly lower multiplier than a level 2 eviscerate

I’m sorry for being a perma-stealthing, backstabbing noob while using S/D

Linguistically Inept.6583:

Flim.4608:

In short, the ability to completely disable an entire class mechanic is pretty ridiculous.

thief class mechanics:
steal (main one… thats affected by trait lines… but weak)
initiative (really the main one)
dual skills
stealth attacks (which sic em wont completely disable – dont be dramatic)

but rangers could throw that argument right back at you, have you seen what pets do when a thief stealths? kitten all. (except howl… which is useful for getting out of SR)

They continue their channelled attack hitting you with a leap or snare? Happens more often than you think.

Pack Hunter.6103:

My only problem with this information….I’m getting married the 12th and will be on my honeymoon >_>

Get your fiance/spouse to play. Those who play together stay together.

Xsorus.2507:

removed for length limitations

A) Considering for the same healing power (300 since thats what it requires to get the trait) regen heals for 167, it’s pretty mediocre. Thats a difference of about 20 hps assuming you stay in stealth for up to 4 seconds. If you only stay in for 3 seconds, adding the time you are revealed (assuming wvw) that gain drops to about 165. Unless you’re great at timing (making sure stealth drops naturally at the time of your hit so you gain that 4th second) that’s worse than regen which doesn’t require you to stop attacking.

B) Confusion can be a problem if you have a channel on you that’s still hitting you in stealth which you need to dodge. Torment ticks at 150% of bleed while you’re moving (which a thief needs to do constantly). Granted withdraw vs HiS is a tradeoff, but don’t assume that every thief can remove damaging conditions with their heal because there are other variables that need to be taken into account.

C)For drawn out battles you have to include that reveal time after the second condition remove because during the next 10 second time frame you’ll do worse in terms of condition removal. If you want, we can say come back to saying you drop stealth immediately after the second removal, meaning that if you include reveal, you remove 4 conditions every 12 seconds. Furthermore, it’s only sort of passive in terms of removal. To use it you have to enter stealth (granted there are a number of ways) but it won’t work passively unless you actively engage stealth.

My original point stands though. With stealth, you get benefits comparable to other classes for the tradeoff of not attacking. This isn’t to say that the stealth abilities aren’t strong, (in fact we don’t have many other traits in other lines which could accomplish similar levels of effectiveness which is where the problem with thieves stems from) but it does have its own drawbacks.

Xsorus.2507:

Maugetarr.6823:

Xsorus.2507:

That’s not a draw back.

Cause they’re not doing damage to you.

Esp when Stealth gives you so many benefits.

Now if Stealth didn’t let you heal/remove conditions you might have a point, Because The other person would be getting those benefits while you weren’t.

But considering most thieves can stealth at half health, and come out 4 seconds later with full health and all the conditions removed off of them, You’re not getting a drawback by stealthing.

How do thieves get to full health 4 seconds later? The heal in stealth is only about 330 HPS meaning about 1300 or so health by the end of that. If you have more than 1 damaging condition on you (very likely against engis and necros) all you’re effectively doing is canceling one out until it might get removed at the end of 3 seconds. Other professions have both better passive and active condi removal. Lets take cleansing ire on the warrior for example (comparable since its in their toughness line also); cleansing ire rewards the warrior for being more aggressive instead of backing off, resulting in 3 conditions removed every 7 3/4 seconds while encouraging them to attack for the condition clear. It’s the equivalent to us getting the benefits of ‘while in stealth’ to ‘upon revealed’ instead. That would cause you to benefit from keeping up pressure rather than having to drop pressure 50% or so of the time to gain a noticeable benefit from traiting into stealth.

A. a 1300 Point Heal every few seconds is incredibly powerful. Just look at warriors, who don’t stealth, and you can see how a heal every couple seconds is powerful.

B. You have access to a Heal that removes Most of the damaging conditions off of you, You have a very good Condition Removal ability with the cleanse while in stealth as well. If you’re dying because of conditions that’s on you.

C. Cleansing Ire is incredibly powerful, But then again Warriors are over the top right now, If you want to compare your Cleaning Ability, look at Rangers. We remove 3 conditions every 10 seconds. This is a GM trait, You can remove 4 Conditions every 10 Seconds (5 if you’re really lucky) this is an Adept Trait. All it requires you to do is Stealth, which you’re doing anyway.

If you want to see how powerful Stealth is with these abilities tacked onto them, Don’t drop 30 points in Shadow Arts, and run around WvW for a bit.

A)Yes, thats 1300 over a 7 second span if you include the reveal time. 188ish HPS (assuming you stay in stealth for over 3 seconds to gain the benefit from shadow’s embrace + 1300 was based off staying in stealth the full duration) is just slightly above that of regen which is fairly easily accessible by a number of classes. The tradeoff though is that for those 4 seconds the thief can’t apply pressure to their opponent.

B) Yes, we do have a heal that removes burning, poison, and bleeding upon it’s use. That only leaves confusion and torment limiting your actions and mobility. Furthermore, using that heal, you miss out on withdraw which removes immobilize, cripple, and chill which are arguably more deadly in the short term as they are usually followed up by a burst.

C)With the same assumptions made from the first part, the thief can only remove 4 conditions every 13 seconds, assuming stealth immediately after reveal wears off. To accomplish this, again they can’t pressure their enemy in the process.

So it seems that traiting entirely into stealth brings up thieves to barely be equivalent to some of the other regeneration and cleanses that other classes have while simultaneously cutting their damage output to nothing during that duration to gain said benefits.

Xsorus.2507:

That’s not a draw back.

Cause they’re not doing damage to you.

Esp when Stealth gives you so many benefits.

Now if Stealth didn’t let you heal/remove conditions you might have a point, Because The other person would be getting those benefits while you weren’t.

But considering most thieves can stealth at half health, and come out 4 seconds later with full health and all the conditions removed off of them, You’re not getting a drawback by stealthing.

How do thieves get to full health 4 seconds later? The heal in stealth is only about 330 HPS meaning about 1300 or so health by the end of that. If you have more than 1 damaging condition on you (very likely against engis and necros) all you’re effectively doing is canceling one out until it might get removed at the end of 3 seconds. Other professions have both better passive and active condi removal. Lets take cleansing ire on the warrior for example (comparable since its in their toughness line also); cleansing ire rewards the warrior for being more aggressive instead of backing off, resulting in 3 conditions removed every 7 3/4 seconds while encouraging them to attack for the condition clear. It’s the equivalent to us getting the benefits of ‘while in stealth’ to ‘upon revealed’ instead. That would cause you to benefit from keeping up pressure rather than having to drop pressure 50% or so of the time to gain a noticeable benefit from traiting into stealth.

The stealth heal will also remove the damaging conditions (burning, poison, bleeding upon use) further compounding what you are seeing. This is on a 30 second cooldown though

Mal.1670:

It seems really strange that the only charge to Larcenous Strike is halving the boons it rips. Instead of damaging the support utility of s/d, why not increase the initiative cost to 3, reduce the initiative to 1 with the change or just reduce the high damage coeff? AFAIK most thieves aren’t even sword/dagger anyway, I didn’t think it was something that prevalent.

That would severely limit the availability of S/D to evade which is what it relies on for sustained combat since the thief relies on damage avoidance rather than mitigation. This will slow down the rate at which thieves can chip away at boon bunkers. It almost returns it to the state of the release of the game except that it costs more initiative, is split, and steals a boon rather than destroying one. Interestingly enough, the reason it was buffed was that boon bunkers were becoming so prevalent and hard to kill that they gave warriors and thieves different forms of boon hate to deal with them. We’ll see if this reversion creates the same meta or if the since buffed necro will keep them in check.

Zacchary.6183:

Sanduskel.1850:

Novomundum.8325:

I see. So the dp builds is op while everything else is fine. I can’t believe some people are condemning an entire profession based on 1 builds though. seems a bit close minded. But now, what’s the deal with dp? is there really absolutely no way to solve their nigh immortality?

Well 90+% of my fellow thieves use that spec. Thieves who don’t rely on perma stealth aren’t opd at all. They don’t need the crutch.

No. Can you please stop vouching for us?

^Please?

Incurafy.6329:

All this change does is revert 2 thirds of the buff to FS and keep the path fixing. Not a big deal, and unlike what some other seem to believe, it fits perfectly with their philosophy of small changes.

It it’s mostly reverted then, it would be nice if they reverted the initiative cost back. It’s already going to slow down combat, might as well return that too.

Put it in the balance preview thread. Don’t know if they’re still reading it as it ballooned to a huge number of pages quickly, but the possibility that it’s seen there is better than here.

Why? Heartseeker above 50% health is only good for gap closing. You’d be better off dps wise auto attacking.

It seems like people have short memories on this subject though. Warriors and thieves got boon hate because burst was brought down to a point that boon bunkers could outlast anything thrown at them. So now were going to go back to the original flanking strike’s offensive ability (albeit with better pathing at least). Hopefully the boost to necros and engis will keep bunkers overall in check, but there certainly won’t be a fear of thieves killing bunkers by either bursting them to death or slowly removing their defensive capabilities.

Coloxeus.3480:

Warrior/guardian era will start october 15 payback!.. GG thieves will be @ bottom of food chain!

They sorta are already. I dont think wars or guards are particularly overpowered, but thieves are falling behind. Other than a couple of people still complaining how thieves can instagib them, the shift in complaints has gone from “they kill me and I can’t fight back” to “when thieves can’t kill me they run away too well” (its been a subtle shift in tone). I think this is partially l2p when it comes to wars,but well see once the Oct 15th patch hits and the sigil of paralyzation is changed along with dependable stability added for engineers (longer than 1 second). This may keep the warriors in check with the ample amount of soft/hard cc engineers can bring.

I thought mathematically speaking a fight had to go on for more than 25 seconds before the benefits on healing sig outweighed that of healing surge.

i.e. 392 HPS*25 seconds=9800 health
healing surge=9820 health at full adrenaline (327 HPS when taking into account its recharge time)

Healing sig may have better HPS when comparing , but the burst healing from Surge can be invaluable depending on your build. If you’re playing a bursty build, healing sig is probably not for you, but if you’re trying to tank a point/group you’d probably favor it.