Stealth Counter Play: Driving My WvW Guild Members From Playing the Game

To preface this, my guild mainly runs havoc/roaming. Blob fighting is for lazy days. Also Deadeye is the biggest offender.

The biggest issue my guild faces currently is stealth, its targeting mechanics and it's lack of counter play. Yes "revealed" is a thing however, there is only ONE**** skill that has a reliable enough area and DOESN'T REQUIRE A TARGET (really whoever came up with the targetting idea on all but 1 reveal skills doesn't understand targetting mechanics), that being Detection Pulse. The primary issues with said skill are that A) its range is shorter than deadeye's rifle range and B) deadeye can remove revealed (which in itself is a broken mechanic). While its true that DH has a trap the applies revealed, it only lasts for 1s and thief and mesmer have so much mobility and the trap has such a relatively small area, it's a non-factor.

The other issue with stealth is that is breaks targeting. While it makes sense from an immersion perspective, its a god awful mechanic from a gameplay perspective. A lot of the skills one would use to kill a dead eye at 1500 range require you to move in range AND have a target. The issue is,by that time you're dead. When a character can do half of your health bar at 1500 range from stealth, while you have over 20k health and 3.2k armor, and then proceeds to drop back into stealth, you just lose. You almost never see it coming either a half decent thief can from the longest range in the game mark you then drop you to half with essentially no chance for counter play.

This comes down to an issue of PvP fighting (definitely in WvW and from what i've heard in actual PvP as well) not taking much skill. Its who has the cheesiest set-up. Some could argue "Whats the difference between that and stun warrior?" Stun warrior has to contend with stability and stun breaks. A deadeye only has to worry about another deadeye. even then thay can drop back into stealth.

Notice how I've left Mesmer, Engineer, and Ranger out of this. Those classes don't rely entirely on stealth for all gameplay. When I see a thief in WvW, it is 99 times out of 100 a Deadeye. All any deadeye ever does is stealth, shoot crazy burst from 1500 range, and then stealth again. If you don't kill, a repeat of the previous sentence is all you need.

The balancing in WvW has been spotty at best for years but when you remove counterplay, there is no balance. This lack of counter play promotes an unhealthy game-state for any game. That why a lot of games that focus on PvP gameplay have limited or no stealth, or some kind of counter play measures for it.

The easiest solution would be to remove the text "Remove revealed" from Shadow Meld in PvP/WvW game modes. After that, for the sake of balancing, give it a third charge and reduce the charge recharge to 35 seconds, or some other method that retains balance. I have yet to see any other elite skill not only feel as impactful, but also actually be as impactful as Shadow Meld.

What do other people think about the lack of counterplay?

@jpsssss.7530 said:The other issue with stealth is that is breaks targeting. While it makes sense from an immersion perspective, its a god awful mechanic from a gameplay perspective.

Yet this very thing is a counterplay in zerg fights to pinsniping... :(

OP's complaint seems to be focused on 1v1s or perhaps 2v2s? Not something ANET balances the game around.

Out side of all in burst builds 3 sec reveal not enofe to kill mid armor level classes and do to how much self healing thf gets when in stealth it become a waiting game to simply out last the 1 or 2 reveal skills.

As for pin sniper body blocks should be the counter to this if the driving in the first one in then they will get hit first any way making any fight a defector pin snip due to movement alone.

@"Turk.5460" said:OP's complaint seems to be focused on 1v1s or perhaps 2v2s? Not something ANET balances the game around.

Not true. They don't put as much emphasis on these scenarios but they absolutely balance around 1v1. Also, there are many scenarios in both pvp and wvw (including within groupfights) that are "effectively" 1v1s for at least some period of time. Good balance around 1v1s will keep interactions like these fun and fair for the game overall.

@Arcaedus.7290 said:

@"Turk.5460" said:OP's complaint seems to be focused on 1v1s or perhaps 2v2s? Not something ANET balances the game around.

I'm not sure why the focus is often around Thief when it comes to this, though. For example, Holosmith is far more oppressive against a wider variety of professions and builds, and easier to play as well. The problem here is that everything needs to have an overhaul, not just one or two professions. I don't see that happening though.

I think they should just make it so that people don't go completely invisible immediately upon entering stealth but rather gradually fade so it would give some counterplay to perma stealth builds.

@Turk.5460 said:

@Arcaedus.7290 said:

@Turk.5460 said:OP's complaint seems to be focused on 1v1s or perhaps 2v2s? Not something ANET balances the game around.

True, but this isn't a reason not to nerf/deal with the problem builds one at a time.

@jpsssss.7530 said:Its who has the cheesiest set-up.

If you want PvP that is based on skill more than cheese, then you should probably avoid MMORPGs (especially openword(ish) type game modes like WvW), virtually all of them are imbalanced, cheesefests aimed at PvE players (which is what most WvW players really are)

@Israel.7056 said:I think they should just make it so that people don't go completely invisible immediately upon entering stealth but rather gradually fade so it would give some counterplay to perma stealth builds.

There's no such thing as a perma stealth deadeye though. Deaths judgment applies reveal to you whether it hits or not. If the opponent doesn't react fast enough to the lazor beam or loud visual cue and look for you, that's on them.

A few other things i'd mention.Reveal doesn't have to stop the thief from restealthing. It just needs to give you a second to target him and start a channeled skill such as rapid fire, or throw some instant casts. Pay attention to a circle on the ground to know if hes ported away from the spot or is running from it so you know if aoe there is a good idea. Look for the telltale snipers cover or black powder stealth being blasted or leapt through.

Sic em while it requires a target, is a 2k range reveal that doesn't require line of sight. It also happens to be on a class that can use the revealed window to start a disgustingly powerful channel that will kill most thieves regardless of whether they stealth in the middle of it. Scrapper reveal is a huge radius but the thing that is MORE powerful in most engys hands seems to be the reveal trait. Go holo form press 5, hes now revealed and cc'd.

Incidentally, a thief does not get the really high burst by going stealth then hitting you once. If he has full malice to one shot or nearly one shot you, you stood there and let him get repeated hits on you.

I get really quite annoyed by people complaining about thief or other 'gank' being good in small scale scenarios. They're absolutely garbage in large scale fights in comparison to ele, necro, guard, etc. Small scale is what they are for. If you bring a thief to a blob fight don't complain when you get 1/4 of the bags of an ele. When you bring a decent blob class to small scale, don't complain that a class designed for it is performing well at it imo. I wouldn't even say thief is necessarily best at it, rangers, holos and mesmers all do well depending on the player.

@Celsith.2753 said:Incidentally, a thief does not get the really high burst by going stealth then hitting you once. If he has full malice to one shot or nearly one shot you, you stood there and let him get repeated hits on you.

Not if it's against your common Power Mesmer, Thief, Ele, and often Guard, Rev, and Ranger. A 1-malice(from initial mark), Assassin's Signet + Malicious Backstab on an all-Valkyrie CS/SA/DE build will do 18-19k against no-toughness Mes/Thief/Ele - which is a one shot 90% of the time. Against Guard/Rev/Ranger (using only durability runes as their toughness) it will do 15-17k supplemented by quickness-auto attacks immediately after for an almost one-shot.

@Turk.5460 said:

@Celsith.2753 said:Incidentally, a thief does not get the really high burst by going stealth then hitting you once. If he has full malice to one shot or nearly one shot you, you stood there and let him get repeated hits on you.

I'm assuming that as he's complaining about high burst that he's not playing high burst and is one of those 2 support/condi 'havok' groups. I would hope that a shatter mes or glass ranger understands they'd get hit as hard as they hit themselves.

@Celsith.2753 said:

@Turk.5460 said:

@Celsith.2753 said:Incidentally, a thief does not get the really high burst by going stealth then hitting you once. If he has full malice to one shot or nearly one shot you, you stood there and let him get repeated hits on you.

Oh yeah, the groups that call themselves "Roamers." Makes sense.

@jpsssss.7530 said:

Notice how I've left Mesmer, Engineer, and Ranger out of this. Those classes don't rely entirely on stealth for all gameplay. When I see a thief in WvW, it is 99 times out of 100 a Deadeye. All any deadeye ever does is stealth, shoot crazy burst from 1500 range, and then stealth again. If you don't kill, a repeat of the previous sentence is all you need.

O RLY, and how long you been playing WvW?

@Turk.5460 said:

@Arcaedus.7290 said:

@Turk.5460 said:OP's complaint seems to be focused on 1v1s or perhaps 2v2s? Not something ANET balances the game around.

When a holo fails its burst I can make them pay for it. When a deadeye fails their burst they simply disappear until their cooldown are all back again.

Add a skill to every profession that lets them see stealthed characters for a short time? Or is that too broken?

@SoV.5139 said:

@Turk.5460 said:

@Arcaedus.7290 said:

@Turk.5460 said:OP's complaint seems to be focused on 1v1s or perhaps 2v2s? Not something ANET balances the game around.

Right, and they're not contributing anything to any fights for that time being, other than making the marked player a little paranoid. Holo can avoid your counter-burst and continue contributing extremely well, in AoE no less.

Make stealth like it was in WAR. More like blending rather than vanishing. From a distance good luck finding them (you could; just very hard), but up close they are more visible. Also stealth in combat is really rather BM.

@Kaiser.9873 said:Also stealth in combat is really rather BM.

It's bad mannered to use the tools available to you rather than trade blows that you are clearly not meant to trade? You're joking, right?

@Turk.5460 said:OP's complaint seems to be focused on 1v1s or perhaps 2v2s? Not something ANET balances the game around.

m8 it the fact i've had a group of 3 deadeyes wipe my group of 5 because they jump in and out of stealth freely. It wan't even high skill they literally pewpew'd stealthed, rinse and repeat. No chance to hit them. Not to mention this gamestate has ruined small group roaming. And if for some reason you can drop a deadeye to low health, they stealth and reappear outside of a ranger's longbow range. My guild, who before dead eye was released consistently 2-manned keeps can't do that anymore because there is a class that has no counterplay running around.

@Turk.5460 said:

@Kaiser.9873 said:Also stealth in combat is really rather BM.

It's bad design to have someone stealth midfight.

@Sleepwalker.1398 said:

@jpsssss.7530 said:

Notice how I've left Mesmer, Engineer, and Ranger out of this. Those classes don't rely entirely on stealth for all gameplay.

When I see a thief in WvW, it is 99 times out of 100 a Deadeye. All any deadeye ever does is stealth, shoot crazy burst from 1500 range, and then stealth again. If you don't kill, a repeat of the previous sentence is all you need.

O RLY, and how long you been playing WvW?

I've been playing WvW since 2014. I don't have any issues with Mesmers. They have windows of opportunity and if you look you'll be able to tell the difference between player movement and AI. Additionally, you can typically see them coming. Scrappers are a bit of a joke for me to fight kill their gyro and you don't worry about stealth. The only ranger build that is somewhat common that uses a lot of stealth is the trapper druid, and thats trickier, but not terrible. Deadeye can go untouched by anything with melee. Deadeye can remove the one counterplay mechanic stealth has. My issue isn't the burst or stealth itself. Its the lack of counterplay for deadeye.

with the rework anet tied malice to stealth attacks, therefor deadeye will in most builds depend alot on stealth so anet will provide stealth to them. most suggestions ask to nerf stealth frequency or uptime but i highly doubt anet will interfere here as that would likely require another complete rework to keep the elite spec viable.revealed is currently too hard of a counter to many deadeye specs, so that deadeye will keep the reveal remove. if reveal would just make the target visible but not interfere with its traits , stealth attacks etc, then we might not need shadow meld anymore.

@jpsssss.7530 said:

@Turk.5460 said:OP's complaint seems to be focused on 1v1s or perhaps 2v2s? Not something ANET balances the game around.

why cant you play that 'no counterplay class' and two man it ?

@jpsssss.7530 said:

@Sleepwalker.1398 said:

@jpsssss.7530 said:

Notice how I've left Mesmer, Engineer, and Ranger out of this. Those classes don't rely entirely on stealth for all gameplay.

When I see a thief in WvW, it is 99 times out of 100 a Deadeye. All any deadeye ever does is stealth, shoot crazy burst from 1500 range, and then stealth again. If you don't kill, a repeat of the previous sentence is all you need.

O RLY, and how long you been playing WvW?

Well, i gotta say when you encounter a holo that comes out of stealth and chain cc you or a soulbeast that comes out of stealth either downs you in 1 hit or 2 then you will know how the other classes abuse stealth as well.

@"Celsith.2753" said:There's no such thing as a perma stealth deadeye though. Deaths judgment applies reveal to you whether it hits or not. If the opponent doesn't react fast enough to the lazor beam or loud visual cue and look for you, that's on them.

"Perma stealth" is perhaps hyperbole granted but they still have lots of stealth and I do think the OP makes a valid complaint about stealth in this game. I think my suggestion would add some extra counterplay to stealth that would make it much less powerful overall. Also if stealthed people would be translucent to anyone standing within like 120 range of them or something.