Shadow arts is skilless garbage

change my mind

What are you complaining about?

The stealth on steal?The life stealth effects?The extra blinds?The boonrip on stealth attacks?The condi cleanse in stealth?The regeneration and initiative in stealth?

Or are you just complaining because you got killed by a thief and imagine they were running SA?

@"saerni.2584" said:What are you complaining about?

The stealth on steal?The life stealth effects?The extra blinds?The boonrip on stealth attacks?The condi cleanse in stealth?The regeneration and initiative in stealth?

Or are you just complaining because you got killed by a thief and imagine they were running SA?

Since they are referring to trait line as "skill-less" I believe they are referring to the passive nature of those abilities/effects you just listed.

@gnotshr.9136

Well by that definition...I guess GW2 as a whole isn’t looking too good is it?

Heh.

Well, maybe it is or isn't ... but that doesn't matter in the first place. It's theme-appropriate for the class ... so no one should be surprised by it.

I think there will be nerfs soon. Probably will either do nothing or completely bury the entire traitline. Can't wait to see.

Yeah, more nerfs... exactly what thieves need now. Seems like you guys want a competitive scenario with only elementalist, mesmer, guardian and necromancers

@Obtena.7952 said:Well, maybe it is or isn't ... but that doesn't matter in the first place. It's theme-appropriate for the class ... so no one should be surprised by it.

Surprised by it? Perhaps not. However, that something is theme-appropriate has no bearing on whether or not it is a good design.

@Telgum.6071 said:Yeah, more nerfs... exactly what thieves need now. Seems like you guys want a competitive scenario with only elementalist, mesmer, guardian and necromancers

As far as I know, thief is still (and probably always will be) a requirement in high rank PvP.

@AliamRationem.5172 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:Well, maybe it is or isn't ... but that doesn't matter in the first place. It's theme-appropriate for the class ... so no one should be surprised by it.

Is that really the claim? Shadow Arts is bad design? Do we really think giving it that label (or skill-less garbage label) is a compelling argument for anything?

Honest, based on 8 years of watching this game get changed, IMO it's MOST likely that a theme-focused argument is going to the BEST way to get a change ... not some judgement of 'good' design or not.

@Telgum.6071 said:Yeah, more nerfs... exactly what thieves need now. Seems like you guys want a competitive scenario with only elementalist, mesmer, guardian and necromancers

I'd rather see a design where stealth and mobility are restricted significantly more than they are now in competitive modes for all classes. Classes that rely heavily on these mechanics should be compensated in other ways. The general thrust of such changes would be to reduce TTK not via overtuned damage, but rather by forcing classes to actually fight each other instead of endlessly disengaging and recovering.

In my opinion, GW2 has a rather excellent combat system with a fast, fluid feel. It's a shame it's so often ruined by stalemates caused in part by skillsets that allow players far too much freedom to disengage whenever they like.

@"MindWipe.3028" said:change my mind

Ah yes, one-liner followed up with "change my mind", the peak of online intellectualism.

If you're interested in having a conversation instead of meme-ing, then first you'd need to actually make your case by at least shortly supporting your main claim.

But if you think what you wrote is enough, then here's the appropriate answer:It's not. Change my mind, OP. :D

@knite.1542 said:I think there will be nerfs soon. Probably will either do nothing or completely bury the entire traitline. Can't wait to see.

The funny thing is, lots of people (usually the non thief players in a zerg) complain about stealth on thieves because it lets them +1 an unaware opponent, but guild groups in WvW are doing EXACTLY THE SAME THING. The SA traitline isn't even needed to maintain permanent stealth, you can do that just with leaps/blasts in smoke fields on a DA/Tr/DD build and have significantly better combat utility to boot. So unless they bottle up and change what smoke combo fields do FOR ALL CLASSES (so engi and ranger would be equally nerfed) and balance stealth around cooldowns, be it on utilities or traits, nothing is really going to change by nerfing SA.

@Jugglemonkey.8741 said:

@knite.1542 said:I think there will be nerfs soon. Probably will either do nothing or completely bury the entire traitline. Can't wait to see.

Precisely. If they nerf SA to any great degree then other classes can very well have more access to stealth then the thief class which wrong at every level.

They should never have started handing out stealth like Candy to rival classes.

If they make any change to SA it will not be enough for the people on the forums who complain.

Their goal isn’t balance so much as removal of thief as a viable profession. Not so much in that thieves wouldn’t become viable in other ways. Rather, that thief would be nerfed in ways that make it unrecognizable as a thief.

Anet might tweak a stealth duration. I doubt we would see a nerf to combo stealth fields. Which is the real source of stealth uptime.

When I see an enemy mesmer running to +1 my 1vs1, I run away asap. When I see a thief... oh wait I don't see them.

@Armen.1483 said:When I see an enemy mesmer running to +1 my 1vs1, I run away asap. When I see a thief... oh wait I don't see them.

If you want to fix long duration stealth then SA nerfs aren't exactly a good answer here

@Telgum.6071 said:Yeah, more nerfs... exactly what thieves need now. Seems like you guys want a competitive scenario with only elementalist, mesmer, guardian and necromancers

Im sorry what? Mesmer being in the competitive scenario? You are joking right?

Hidden Thief: Reduced base stealth duration from 2 seconds to 0.25 seconds in PvP only.Concealing Restoration: Reduced base stealth duration from 1 second to 0.5 seconds in PvP only.

GG. We have achieved balance.

@knite.1542 said:Hidden Thief: Reduced base stealth duration from 2 seconds to 0.25 seconds in PvP only.Concealing Restoration: Reduced base stealth duration from 1 second to 0.5 seconds in PvP only.GG. We have achieved balance.

They should just get rid of that one, at least in WvW. Stealth on heal feels like overkill considering the heal options we have and it's actually annoying most of the time, especially in marked up territory.

@Sobx.1758 said:

@"Armen.1483" said:When I see an enemy mesmer running to +1 my 1vs1, I run away asap. When I see a thief... oh wait I don't see them.

I agree with you, friend. It is not about "how strong thief's damage or stealth is". My problem is the unavailability of counterplay. I find it uninteractive and unfun to play against or as a thief. Instadaze, high damage skills witho no cast time that come from nowhere is my issue. Even if you saw a thief stealth you gotta guess when that daze is coming, fail horribly waste a dodge and die. Guessing is not a viable counterplay imo and more stealth isn't helping it. So yeah shadow arts is just the tip of the iceberg, many other things need to be addressed.

@Armen.1483 said:

@Sobx.1758 said:

@Armen.1483 said:When I see an enemy mesmer running to +1 my 1vs1, I run away asap. When I see a thief... oh wait I don't see them.

It probably wont help any and shouldn't be considered when designing counter play to stealth, but there is a very fast and kind of subtle blur at the beginning of a stealth pop and that is where I try to catch a thief opener or cut off a mesmer portal. I keep my camera pan speed fast and am always scanning around the area which is how you can, spot a stealth plot, and read someone going into stealth and check their tells like stealth whisps from skills and their orientation on the ground can give away some of their thought. Most of the time from reading the tells, you can feel where they'll come out for an interrupt or pull or be able to orient and react to an opener. I don't mind fighting stealth, there are tells and it's an easier paced fight but something like Binding Shadow or anything that launches or travels similarly from stealth is just dumb and can compound other gimmicks that make stealth play frustrating.

@knite.1542 said:Hidden Thief: Reduced base stealth duration from 2 seconds to 0.25 seconds in PvP only.Concealing Restoration: Reduced base stealth duration from 1 second to 0.5 seconds in PvP only.GG. We have achieved balance.

The pvp forum people seem to think this will significantly improve their issues with thief. I’m still not convinced.

All it did was shave a half second off the heal stealth and cut the total stealth on steal mechanic from 3 seconds to 1.25 seconds. People who said “cut stealth uptime” probably didn’t mean removing a maximum 2.25 seconds of stealth duration every 17 seconds (using withdraw and using Swipe/Mark on cool down). That may be helpful for fighting some thieves...but I think people will still complain that stealth is somehow OP when the thief just stacks stealth using combo fields and does what they normally did pre-patch.

Also this only applies to spvp. WvW keeps the higher duration numbers (because for whatever reason the pvp people don’t like sharing their changes with whoever approves wvw skill changes).

Guess we will see in 2-3 months.

The change won't matter. People have constantly complained about thieves since beta and thieves have gotten nerf after nerf ever since.

@saerni.2584 said:

@"knite.1542" said:Hidden Thief: Reduced base stealth duration from 2 seconds to 0.25 seconds in PvP only.Concealing Restoration: Reduced base stealth duration from 1 second to 0.5 seconds in PvP only.GG. We have achieved balance.

They basically changed the stealth sources in SA into target drops in PvP only. Which is fine, they are still very useful like that, but as you say it doesn't accomplish the intended "goal" of fixing long stealth durations in any way shape or form when smoke fields still do what they do. It does mean SA thieves have less easy outs when +1'd tho, which is a good thing since that is the main advantage SA thieves have over non-SA thieves and is the reason you see so many D/P SA thieves in PvP right now. So by making SA vs non-SA thief matchups less lopsided for decap and +1, I imagine the build variety in PvP will increase as a result which is a good thing.