Discussion about Stealth

In light of the discussion that's going on concerning Mirage and Mesmer burst, but aside from that, in general also an in my opinion much-needed discussion about stealth and stealth spikes in PvP.Some leading questions;

• Do you think stealth (incl. stealth bursts, etc.) is a problem in PvP as it currently functions?
• Should it be changed / reworked somehow? Is it too late in the lifespan of the game to change it now?
• If so, how would you change it? A duration decrease, a cooldown increase, adding more reveal, a full rework, or something else?

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  If I had to rework stealth, I'd probably make it so that whilst in stealth, you get locked out of all your weapon skills. Utilities can be used as normal. By pressing any weapon skill you could then manually cancel stealth for when you want to perform attacks like normal. The exception would be Thief stealth auto. This would hinder excessive stealth spikes (Including the ones caused by giving stealth to other classes like hammer guard or fa ele). I think Mesmer, S/D thief, Druid and Engi could relatively easily be rebalanced according to this, but the most affected spec would obviously be D/P thief. It would have to be compensated in other areas.

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  Personally, I think that changing stealth might be healthier for the game in the long run, but it also might not. When talking about this from a PvP point of view, we should consider that very few games allow fully invisible, long-duration stealth that is also available in combat, can be shared with allies, with the ability to cast any skills while remaining stealthed. Additionally, any potential rework would probably have to take WvW and PvE into consideration, as we have heard from the PvP balance team that splits can generally only be based on numerical values and not the functionality itself.

However, it is also important to consider that currently in the top levels of play, for instance the latest monthly AT, stealth and particularly stealth spikes, are not prevalent. For example, the Mesmer in the winning team in EU (Misha), ran a S/S Staff Mirage with zero access to stealth rather than shatter Mirage, and thief runs S/D with little stealth access. So perhaps right now stealth is most common on Druid and Holo (elexir S) in high levels of play.

Tell us your perspective.

No. Stealth is baked into the game design and especially into the design of thief (which gains stealth based attacks in addition to having extensive stealth based traits).

When people ask for this they are asking for the developers to essentially make an entirely different game. This just isn’t reasonable.

What Anet has responded to in the past is a demand for stealth counters. Abilities that reveal in an AoE around a target or reveal a visible enemy to prevent them going into stealth are two common choices. That said, there are always going to be more stealth options than reveal in many situations, just like there will ideally be more damage than defense in general.

Keep in mind that abilities like Shadowmeld were added due to additional power creep in the form of added reveals.

Nice post, I have a few things to add.

First off, the 'fully invisible, long-duration stealth that is also available in combat, can be shared with allies' is a bit bloated, it really isn't that strong. In PvP, group stealth is useful during the opening plays of the match (when no one has any capture points) or when attempting to stomp/rez allies/enemies. If the entire enemy team stealths up, they can lose their cap very quickly if it's during a fight on a point.

Disengaging is also an option. If the target you are fighting, or the group of enemies, drops an aoe stealth, you will most likely get the decap on a point unless they break the stealth. Once you get a decap, you are pretty much free to rotate off the point and avoid potential bursts while they sit in stealth.

Preventing burst from stealth could be something to look into, but disable weapon skills is the wrong way to do it imo. Sure, it would stop mesmers and eles from dropping hard burst with little reaction time, but some classes/builds rely on utility/elite skills to burst from stealth (i.e. holosmiths commonly use Prime Light Beam from Elixer S stealth for cheeky unblockable damage).

Just my 2 cents.