One reoccuring theme that complainers still haven’t addresed or responded to is the fact that these traps are meant for veiled zergs, and not for individual thieves. The aoe is really small, and the fact that wvw maps are so vast, chances of them being all over the place is pretty slim. Plus, given that people have been fightning stealthed thieves for a long time, chances are people wouldn’t waste those traps on 1 thief (unless he’s, you know, badge-rich and wants to troll you).
If Veil and Mass Invis were the problem then Arenanet would just nerf the problematic individual skills (like they nerfed Portal to max 20 players recently). This is obviously targeted at appeasing all the crying about thieves. If Veil and Mass Invis are the problem then they should be nerfed and the stealth trap can be removed from the game. Alternatively, they should offer traps that nullify other professions to make it balanced:
- Boon trap – clears all existing and new boons for the next 30 seconds (Guardians)
- Sticky Hands trap – weapon swap/attunements cannot be switched for 30 seconds (Elementalist)
- Pet trap – pet instantly dies and pet swap goes on cooldown for 30 seconds (Rangers)
- Clone trap – clones and phantasms cannot be created for 30 seconds (Mesmers)
- Bundle trap – kits cannot be equipped or used for 30 seconds (Engineers)
- Condition trap – conditions and lifesteal cannot be used for 30 seconds (Necro)
- Flashbang trap – all heavy armour attacks will miss for 30 seconds (Warrior/Guardian)
All of these traps sound unfair to the impacted professions because they are.
“Stealth trap – can’t stealth for 30 seconds” is just as unfair as any of the traps listed above.
Trap doesn’t prevent you from attacking / dodging / healing, just no stealth. So for 30 sec thieves have to l2p like the rest of us non-stealthers.
I’m pretty sure that if thieves were designed from the start by Arenanet to be a non-stealth + evasion profession then most thieves would have zero trouble adapting to that play style (and you would all still hate us for ganking you). We adapted to culling reducing our stealth time by about 2 seconds.
Thieves as a profession were never designed to play for long periods of time without stealth – our base 10k HP was no doubt decided upon based on the fact that thieves mitigate the majority of incoming damage via the misdirection and ranged weapon target drop that stealth gives us.
Removing stealth and not buffing our hit points as compensation for losing our stealth is just plain wrong.
90% of that avoidance comes in the form of stealth.
Disabling Shot, Flanking Strike, Death Blossom, Withdraw, Roll for Initiative, Hidden Pistol (Charr only) are all skills that Evade without having stealth involved.
If you think death blossom belongs in a list of evades that are an appropriate alternative to stealth then you obviously don’t understand the thief profession well enough to be considered as having an informed opinion.
Best thing Anet has done since their AC bump mistake
So….. I guess you didn’t like it at Vale supply camp when I dropped a shadow refuge on your dying elementalist body in the middle of a zerg battle and revived you?
except engineers and rangers are medium armored too and they dont have stealth and dish out big damage too , Diference? they rely on actual Skill . truth is thiefs keep saying stealth is their only means of survivability because they exploit stealth they all go 100% glass cannon since they can avoid harm at any time by stealthing that doesnt mean thief isnt capable of fighting other classes without stealth it means thief players have to l2p instead of relying on overpowered mechanics.
As far as I am aware, thieves are one of the weaker and least played professions in tournament PvP because everyone in tPvP has already learnt2play. So it sounds like everyone who thinks thieves have “OP mechanics” need to L2P.
Seems overpowered having so many CC’s on one weapon set
How about changing Body Shot
From:
Damage: 168
Vulnerability: 6 s
Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile
Range: 900
To:
Skill name: Recoil
Skill description: Recoil backwards from your foe, crippling them:
Cost: 3 initiative
Damage: 168
Cripple: 2s
Combo Finisher: Leap
Range: 600
So on demand stealth = Black Powder + Retreat
Very similar to dagger/pistol Black Powder + Heartseeker except that it leaps backwards to escape melee targets.
Plus an increase the firing speed on #1.
Thought experiment: Remove stealth and change it to invulnerability instead. Who will complain?
On demand invulnerability for 3s sounds good to me but you’ll need to make some buffs in exchange for some of the other advantages that stealth gives us.
For example, you’ll need to buff backstab – because people will never let you backstab if they know where you are. Executing that skill relies entirely on my opponent not knowing my location. It will have to be reworked so frontstab gave as much damage as backstab. Fair exchange perhaps still disadvantaging the thief.
There must also be no visual or boon indicators that I am invulnerable. Enemy players only find out I am invulnerable when they “Invulnerable” appearing on their screen. That way players can’t save their dodges for when we are invulnerable and they can’t save their burst damage for the second our invulnerability turns off. They’ll just have to guess when it is gone.
I am assuming this swap from stealth to invulnerability would include buffs to heavy armour (like a guardian) and/or higher base vitality (like a ranger). Given we are primarily a very squishy melee class that avoids all damage via heavy use of stealth – it only seems fair that our lack of stealth is compensated for with increased survivability (how does heavy armour and 13k hp sound?).
I also assume Invulnerable buff would de-target us like Stealth so that the player has to re-target when Invulnerable finishes. i.e., ranger can’t just select us and pew-pew auto attack.. they have to re-target and then trigger the pew pew. Costing them time to reaquire us as a target.
Heartseeker out of black powder will have to make me invulnerable (otherwise you destroy the entire Dagger/Pistol meta). So I assume the Invulnerable can chain like I can with stealth also. So I can be perma invulnerable except for the 3 second ‘Revealed’ debuff following my front/backstab attack on someone.
If you’re happy to give us those extra things then I’ll give it a go.
I am betting my guildies would love 10 seconds of being invulnerable after leaving my refuge to initiate a fight.
I’ll find a way don’t worry
You’d probably die even easier given most times you go to hit a thief it’ll say “Invulnerable” but at least you can see them killing you.
You don’t just have to be 80 – you need to be 80 with exotic armour, weapons and trinkets.
When I levelled my warrior in wvw I got targeted sooooo much as an uplevel player.
Now when I see that green up arrow I just shadow shot onto them and a couple of rotations from my auto attack (from my thief) and they are down.
It is like hazing. I went through it so you must