Semi and Perma-Stealth are junk mechanics

Since launch, stealthing into and out of fights has been broken. Every attempt to "fix" it with counters has proven almost pointless. The mechanic needs to get removed. It irritates pretty much everyone but the trolls that run it. Either stealth before or after an attack not both. Reveals need to be long and they should have no counter. I am fine reworking the handful of traits that revolve around this mechanic. Thieves already have strong evade and movement... I even play a variety of no-stealth builds with success.

This last mark counter was only needed because Deadeye had the ability to remove reveal. The mark mechanic is overly complicated manure for a junk stealth mechanic. Many of the serious thief nerfs over the years track back to balancing stealth. Instead of several weapon sets that work well with dynamic play, most are pigeoned into D/P, Rifle or both.

Tweaking stealth so it is an opener or escape rather than both will go a long ways towards removing one of the most crappy WvW mechanics this game has. Oh and yes, I mainly play a thief.

Stealth mechanics in this game are one of the worse in pvp settings.It will always be terrible because they will never change it since they've built a class entirely around it, the same class they also have hitting single targets the hardest.They've put in more reveals, then stealth trap, then a remove reveal, and now added mark, since the beginning for the game to deal with it is enough proof that it was never developed properly for the pvp environment in the first place.

Anet only puts bandaids over bandaids over bandaids on problems, they will never overhaul this mechanic, they will never balance this mechanic or the classes that overuses it, people will have to accept that.

didnt take long for the next 'stealth is too strong' thread - why am i not surprised?

as said in the last 'yey no more stealthed thieves' thread, stealth will need a complete rework along with a complete redesign on the thief to stop this endless circle of QQ.

Yes, definetly stealth is a problem. You can dodge stealth abillities, you can interrupt going to stealth, you can prevent entering stealth, you can play around it and do other things. The only thing that is/was broken is DE, because it has/had no counter (sorry bois, cleansing revealed, rifle range/malicious bs and stealth on dodge, fun and competetive ). As someone said X years ago, lets grab sticks and shields, only charge and block ability, 5hp per person, single attack deals 1 dmg. Lets go.

Thief was designed around stealth. If you take that from them it will be just a squishy target with all their evades. Before perma stealth deadeye i was playing sword dagger deadeye...people complain, and this is a thing for all thief specs. They repeatedly nerfed them several times. There are lots of way to deal with stealth... As you noticed from the last Arena Net attempt to deal with stealth :))) they are not so good at it. They affected all classes because of one. But...in the end what is a mmorpg without a stealth class? Go play WoW with perma stealth rogues.

@"Silv.1723" said:Thief was designed around stealth. If you take that from them it will be just a squishy target with all their evades. Before perma stealth deadeye i was playing sword dagger deadeye...people complain, and this is a thing for all thief specs. They repeatedly nerfed them several times. There are lots of way to deal with stealth... As you noticed from the last Arena Net attempt to deal with stealth :))) they are not so good at it. They affected all classes because of one. But...in the end what is a mmorpg without a stealth class? Go play WoW with perma stealth rogues.

To be honest I think the complaints are misdirected in some ways. For example I was playing a grieving Sw/F weaver vs my friend on DE with Sw/P and D/D. He died the first few times until I said to him he can just keep spamming DE mark and I can't really catch or stop him at 1500 range. I also pointed out if he keeps using infiltrators strike in to me it puts 3 conditions on me and he can always port out if it's a mistake. After he started abusing infiltrators strike to constantly dip in, pistol whip and leave the fights were unwinnable for me. I could stalemate it by making us both too bored to continue as weaver has good regen but it's not a fight I would really be able to win.

I think really people are just annoyed that they come across thief builds they have no hope of winning against and stealth kind of cements that with disappearing for 3-6s and then appearing on a hill just standing there, ready to teleport in at the right (or wrong depending on who you are) moment. This dark shadowy stalker who is hell bent on getting the kill.

Not saying their complaints are entirely valid but thief due to it's ini system can pretty much "spam" any singular skill that is considered the best skill to use vs a class or where the class is at a distinct disadvantage fighting against. I don't think there's a way around that even with changing stealth.

tbh i dont mind stealth as a mechanic what i dont like is how ANET implemented it. It lasts too long and ANET gave traits that give too many buffs while in stealth. Also what the heck is it with moving "faster" in stealth? That just doesn't make sense. If you're trying to sneak around and not be seen you shouldn't be able to move faster than if you were just sprinting unstealthed. The last game i played did stealth right. They made it so you moved at 66% of normal speed while in stealth. You need to trait it just to be able to move at normal speed. You could NEVER move faster than normal speed while stealthed. That way if you tried to perma stealth you could never catch someone who was trying to run away from you. That in itself is a good counter.

@XenesisII.1540 said:They've put in more reveals, then stealth trap, then a remove reveal, and now added mark, since the beginning for the game to deal with it is enough proof that it was never developed properly for the pvp environment in the first place.It's just fine in the PVP environment, because you can't contest points while stealthed. It only becomes a problem in large open areas you have plenty of places to sneak up on someone from and plenty of space to run away in, ie WvW. That goes for the thief profession as a whole, really.

stealth is broken, thief is broken, mirage is broken.

If anet had a true balance team they would remove stealth and/or remove these two classes for a complete overhaul (including a big fat nerf). Only anet's balance team and thief players can think that hitting someone for 14+k damage, out of stealth and then disappearing into stealth is 'balanced'. Newsflash: it is not.

@Hyper Cutter.9376 said:

@XenesisII.1540 said:They've put in more reveals, then stealth trap, then a remove reveal, and now added mark, since the beginning for the game to deal with it is enough proof that it was never developed properly for the pvp environment in the first place.It's just fine in the

PVP

environment, because you can't contest points while stealthed. It only becomes a problem in large open areas you have plenty of places to sneak up on someone from and plenty of space to run away in, ie WvW. That goes for the thief profession as a whole, really.

Saved by cap prevention, which I don't even remember if that was in at release.Same as that time when thieves use to troll entire wvw zergs with preventing capping too in stealth.Been so long I don't even remember the details of either anymore.

Perma stealth, also not even the first time having to deal that in wvw either, which they only ever bothered to fix the first time because someone got creative with it on a raid boss, not the months and months and months of having to endure it in wvw. Like I said people will have to accept it already, the devs will never overhaul the system.

The stealth mechanic at it's base is not that bad. The idea of having a class that can go invisible has been in rpgs for years, if not since the very beginning. The issue with stealth in gw2 is its implementation. Stealth should have a cost/benefit. Where you get the ability to become invisible at the cost of something else. Currently the cost is losing stealth when hitting a target and Revealed debuff. Putting it logically that means as long as you have a large number of stealth initiators(skills/effects that apply stealth) there's little cost to using stealth. Revealed can even be totally countered now with Shadow Meld.

The problem is stealth is a low cost ability. Raising the cost of stealth would go a long ways. An idea for this would be:

-All forms of stealth increased by 2 seconds. (to balance the nerfs below)-Stealth now breaks on any skill use when in combat.-revealed is applied at the end of any stealth when in combat.-Shadow Meld is changed to another skill that doesn't remove revealed.-Add a design rule that revealed should never be removed.

This allows for high stealth but when your in combat you can't extend it. Additionally stealth can no longer be used as a rest from combat as any skill you use (heal skills included) will reveal you. Escaping will still be possible but you must do it either with stealth/swiftness alone or using teleports, not both. Allowing stealth stacking out of combat will allow thief sneak up on targets but not become total ghosts during combat.

@"VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.3618" said:stealth is broken, thief is broken, mirage is broken.

If anet had a true balance team they would remove stealth and/or remove these two classes for a complete overhaul (including a big fat nerf). Only anet's balance team and thief players can think that hitting someone for 14+k damage, out of stealth and then disappearing into stealth is 'balanced'. Newsflash: it is not.

I'm fine with losing stealth, if you want a nerf along with that then I expect your profession to get it's damage and sustain nerfed as well tho, considering most things can hit just as hard as thief these days.

I run S/P deadeye and I don't run shadow meld now. Daggerstorm is generally much more useful, since between revealed and marked stealth is unreliable at best and not worth traiting into imo. If you still have issues with stealth after the last patch I'd say it's a L2P issue at this point.

I've seen a lot more thieves run daggerstorm now, I rarely see a deadeye that uses shadow meld - it's all mostly daredevils running staff builds and a minute quantity running other dd or core builds.

Stealth should be based around movement and opportunity. Going all the way back to the original Dungeons and Dragon's, good ol' Backstab. Serious damage if it lands, but oh boy are you in trouble otherwise.

I think (not that my noob opinion has value) that stealth should not break targeting. If you already had a lock on your opponent when he goes back into stealth, you won't be able to see him but you stay locked on and your attacks can still hit. This forces the stealthed player to make his moment of opportunity count or otherwise pay the price. (Or just disengage and try again). Right now the reward heavily outweighs the risk.

This all started with Factions, when Anet introduced the Assassin with all its teleporting. It was a cheap class then, and now it has a new name but is even cheaper than before.

@"VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.3618" said:stealth is broken, thief is broken, mirage is broken.

If anet had a true balance team they would remove stealth and/or remove these two classes for a complete overhaul (including a big fat nerf). Only anet's balance team and thief players can think that hitting someone for 14+k damage, out of stealth and then disappearing into stealth is 'balanced'. Newsflash: it is not.

I'd be fine losing stealth and redesigning mesmer to be more like GW1, you might not be though.

Also 14k is no grounds to complain, come back when you get hit with 27k malicious backstab and have rangers pew pewing for 8-10k with auto attacks at a range you can't realistically avoid.

The prestige ; 3 seconds Stealth every 24 seconds when traited. Signet ; 2 seconds Stealth every 30 seconds. Completly broken perma Stealth Mirage.

I like how stealth works on mesmer:

• multiple sources of stealth
• many short-dura but some long-dura stealth
• due to cooldowns, they cannot maintain perma stealth.

That third bullet point is why I hate how it works on thief. Perma-stealth should absolutely not be a thing even if you take all possible stealth skills and traits that boost it. I don't think nerfing stealth access is a logical option here since DE as an elite spec depends so heavily on stealth both for offence and defence. I think the only real way to address this as a balance issue would be to cap the maximum stacking duration of stealth or to nerf the ability to reapply stealth once already in it (like maybe only gain 50% of the stealth duration you would otherwise gain if not stealthed to begin with).

Stealth not broken. WHats broken is the developers decided to put the largest burst damage behind stealth.

Delete all stealth problem solved!! Have not seen many invisible people running around irl

@cobbah.3102 said:Delete all stealth problem solved!! Have not seen many invisible people running around irl

i am getting hit by meteors daily irl, unless i dodgeroll right below one.. then nothing happens!

@"apharma.3741" said:I'd be fine losing stealth and redesigning mesmer to be more like GW1, you might not be though.

https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/List_of_hex_spells

I can only imagine the Q.Q in this game if players were punished for spamming skills. Empathy and Insidious Parasite would hard counter melee. Backfire and Arcane Conundrum would make casters rage. Visions of Regret and Spiteful Spirit would make zergs cry and ragequit the game forever. And those are only some of the many things that made Guild Wars 1 more of an Esport than this game will ever be.

@"Spartacus.3192" said:tbh i dont mind stealth as a mechanic what i dont like is how ANET implemented it. It lasts too long and ANET gave traits that give too many buffs while in stealth. Also what the heck is it with moving "faster" in stealth? That just doesn't make sense. If you're trying to sneak around and not be seen you shouldn't be able to move faster than if you were just sprinting unstealthed. The last game i played did stealth right. They made it so you moved at 66% of normal speed while in stealth. You need to trait it just to be able to move at normal speed. You could NEVER move faster than normal speed while stealthed. That way if you tried to perma stealth you could never catch someone who was trying to run away from you. That in itself is a good counter.

I missed the stealth speed issue. I agree stealth should slow a player down. That change alone would be an interesting change and possibly enough to balance the skill out a bit. At the very least stealth builds would have to compromise damage to retain speed or lose a significant amount of combat mobility to slink around.

I wouldn't say stealth is too strong, it's a perfectly fine mechanic; but it's way too easy at the moment to always have it.

I was on my stealthless daredevil yesterday and got into a battle with a roaming Deadeye. Every time I go to fight he or she stealths several times, hits for 80-90% damage, and goes back into stealth. I'm a daredevil so I can outrun it out of combat to reset the fight and do.

Rinse and repeat this exchange a half dozen times across half the map and I'm not having any fun as I cannot win the fight, I have to play it to a draw.

E> @Hesacon.8735 said:

I wouldn't say stealth is too strong, it's a perfectly fine mechanic; but it's way too easy at the moment to always have it.

I was on my stealthless daredevil yesterday and got into a battle with a roaming Deadeye. Every time I go to fight he or she stealths several times, hits for 80-90% damage, and goes back into stealth. I'm a daredevil so I can outrun it out of combat to reset the fight and do.

Rinse and repeat this exchange a half dozen times across half the map and I'm not having any fun as I cannot win the fight, I have to play it to a draw.

Stealth access is part of the problem in that encounter. The other problem is you being able to run away and reset each and every time.

There are larger global issues here. Stealth and mobility are one part.