Temporarily add -33% outgoing damage or unable to crit while having revealed till balance patch

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

@Zexanima.7851 said:

@Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

@ZDragon.3046 said:

@Zexanima.7851 said:I don't think your suggestion is the right solution but stealth is really too OP in this game. Think about it. Imagine playing tennis but you couldn't see the ball until the moment it hits your side of the court. In any person vs person scenario the one with the most information has a huge advantage. Stealth strips all information from the opponent and makes them rely completely on luck and divination instead of their own knowledge and skills. When you lose to this it doesn't feel good. It just feels like you got unlucky on trying to guess when they would engage on you. Stealth honestly needs a completely different redesign. Perhaps you only become 50% invisible so that way you can still be seen if people are paying attention but you can't be crit and get pulsing stab while in stealth.

This is truth but people wont ever see it this way especially if they use the mechanic a lot in this game with explosive exploitation.Because its fun having the power role. Stealth immediately (in most cases and in most matchups) gives that person the power role completely with minimal chances of counter-play. The few professions who can counter-play it easily being hearld rev, and engi. but even then its more of a guess in a lot of cases and should your 1 attempt fail you are SoL till they attack.

Stealth truthfully does need a rework and the current version of stealth should be limited to thief only and with proper trade off investment (perhaps naturally in smaller amounts)

Personally if it was up to me i would do it something like this (taken with a grain of salt of course) im not a game designer but...

The game needs 2 types of stealth mechanical play.

1: Camouflaged:

has translucent silhouette of player almost as if looking at a player under stealth on your team (this is harder to see at beyond the 900 range but not impossible to see) meaning if you really look you can see them but they cant be directly targeted by skills (this voids well over 50% of all attacks in the game if it cant cleave it you cant use it against them) while under the effects.Camo. is gained by blasting or leaping in smoke fields and by most common skills such as decoy, the prestige, hunters shot ,blinding powder, elixer toss, etc.Camo gained by combo finishers has a slightly longer duration than the base effect we see from stealth right now.

2: Stealth:

This is the real deal true invisibility. ITs is gained my more rare skills and a few traits like shadows refuge, Stealth Gyro, Mass invisibility, Shadow Meld, Silent scope, Hide in Shadows, etc. This kind of stealth is more rare to other professions and mostly exclusive to thief. This works the same way as it always has just now it requires investment and is not possible to perma stack it through things like smoke combo fields. Camo will not overwrite stealth effects but stealth can overwrite the camo effect.

Reveal

still removes stealth but does not remove camouflage. Reveal will allow a players to directly target someone under the camouflage effect for its duration though. (think of this like seeing and being able to target the red silhouettes of the HoT mobs that are under stealth once you learn the mastery). Attacking from camo applies self reveal that prevents re-entry for a duration.

Shadow arts

and a few other traits get a rework to boost camouflage duration but not stealth duration and boost effects for thieves such as having a minor evade on initial camo entry, taking reduced or non critical strikes while in camouflage and or stealth, recovering health and increased movement speed while under camouflage. Possibly even gaining something like when dropping from stealth without attacking first enter camouflaged for a few seconds or Attacking from camouflaged delays its removal for a few (like 2) seconds. Of course i dont really mean all of these at the same time but these are just randomly thrown ideas.

Stealth attacks

are available in both methods though perhaps we see a rework to those attacks to to not make them so situational. For example backstab flipping to a different skill while under camo that does not require hitting a person in the back to gain some kind of bonus because lets face it that wont happen if you can see the silhouette of the player. This would require more work and effort but i mean it would be necessary to this concept for thief.

The goal of this would be for true stealth to be more unique to thief while also taking a back seat as the more rare effect in the stealthy aspect of the game giving them an edge with the mechanic. Even the Camouflaged effect would provide thief with additional means of sustain while allowing some skilled level of counter-play thats not guessing blinding or hoping to get that one reveal proc from x skill.For other professions the "Camouflaged" effect would have the base benefit such as ignoring direct targeting which cuts out a massive percentage of skills in the game while also allowing some counter play. (you dont get away with insane things with no tell) Some weapons are even entirely voided without a direct target so the applications for this lesser stealth would still great benefit and keeps them from having the same prowess as thief with the same mechanic.

Other professions have more counter-play naturally opened up as their sustain through stealth becomes slightly lesser but not completely removed and will no longer commonly have the same effectiveness as thief all the time when it comes to sneak attacks or disengage.

Im ready for the "bad idea" Slaughter fest gg wp :cry:

It's fine. Camo sounds fun. All I'm worried about is that I will need better access to sustain and damage mitigation. Stealth -is- annoying, but under that stealth is a thief/mes that is basically praying you don't cleave him because they don't have any damage reduction and are using that lack of visual -as- their damage mitigation.If I can just see a thief by looking really closely (or by messing with my graphics settings), and any cleave I do just goes straight to his HP pool, I don't think that's good design.

If that issue is addressed, I really don't care how visible I am on thief.

That's why I was thinking it should prevent crit damage and possibly give you 1 sec of 1 stack of stab ever one seconds. How are you going to crit on someone you can't really see? The bit stab would prevent them from just getting instantly CC locked but could get hit by chain CC's if not careful.

See, now That's something I can get behind.I'd be fine removing stealth if the rework looked something like that and didnt break pve.

[ZDragon.3046]

@Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

@Zexanima.7851 said:

@Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

@ZDragon.3046 said:

@Zexanima.7851 said:I don't think your suggestion is the right solution but stealth is really too OP in this game. Think about it. Imagine playing tennis but you couldn't see the ball until the moment it hits your side of the court. In any person vs person scenario the one with the most information has a huge advantage. Stealth strips all information from the opponent and makes them rely completely on luck and divination instead of their own knowledge and skills. When you lose to this it doesn't feel good. It just feels like you got unlucky on trying to guess when they would engage on you. Stealth honestly needs a completely different redesign. Perhaps you only become 50% invisible so that way you can still be seen if people are paying attention but you can't be crit and get pulsing stab while in stealth.

This is truth but people wont ever see it this way especially if they use the mechanic a lot in this game with explosive exploitation.Because its fun having the power role. Stealth immediately (in most cases and in most matchups) gives that person the power role completely with minimal chances of counter-play. The few professions who can counter-play it easily being hearld rev, and engi. but even then its more of a guess in a lot of cases and should your 1 attempt fail you are SoL till they attack.

Stealth truthfully does need a rework and the current version of stealth should be limited to thief only and with proper trade off investment (perhaps naturally in smaller amounts)

Personally if it was up to me i would do it something like this (taken with a grain of salt of course) im not a game designer but...

The game needs 2 types of stealth mechanical play.

1: Camouflaged:

has translucent silhouette of player almost as if looking at a player under stealth on your team (this is harder to see at beyond the 900 range but not impossible to see) meaning if you really look you can see them but they cant be directly targeted by skills (this voids well over 50% of all attacks in the game if it cant cleave it you cant use it against them) while under the effects.Camo. is gained by blasting or leaping in smoke fields and by most common skills such as decoy, the prestige, hunters shot ,blinding powder, elixer toss, etc.Camo gained by combo finishers has a slightly longer duration than the base effect we see from stealth right now.

2: Stealth:

This is the real deal true invisibility. ITs is gained my more rare skills and a few traits like shadows refuge, Stealth Gyro, Mass invisibility, Shadow Meld, Silent scope, Hide in Shadows, etc. This kind of stealth is more rare to other professions and mostly exclusive to thief. This works the same way as it always has just now it requires investment and is not possible to perma stack it through things like smoke combo fields. Camo will not overwrite stealth effects but stealth can overwrite the camo effect.

Reveal

still removes stealth but does not remove camouflage. Reveal will allow a players to directly target someone under the camouflage effect for its duration though. (think of this like seeing and being able to target the red silhouettes of the HoT mobs that are under stealth once you learn the mastery). Attacking from camo applies self reveal that prevents re-entry for a duration.

Shadow arts

and a few other traits get a rework to boost camouflage duration but not stealth duration and boost effects for thieves such as having a minor evade on initial camo entry, taking reduced or non critical strikes while in camouflage and or stealth, recovering health and increased movement speed while under camouflage. Possibly even gaining something like when dropping from stealth without attacking first enter camouflaged for a few seconds or Attacking from camouflaged delays its removal for a few (like 2) seconds. Of course i dont really mean all of these at the same time but these are just randomly thrown ideas.

Stealth attacks

are available in both methods though perhaps we see a rework to those attacks to to not make them so situational. For example backstab flipping to a different skill while under camo that does not require hitting a person in the back to gain some kind of bonus because lets face it that wont happen if you can see the silhouette of the player. This would require more work and effort but i mean it would be necessary to this concept for thief.

The goal of this would be for true stealth to be more unique to thief while also taking a back seat as the more rare effect in the stealthy aspect of the game giving them an edge with the mechanic. Even the Camouflaged effect would provide thief with additional means of sustain while allowing some skilled level of counter-play thats not guessing blinding or hoping to get that one reveal proc from x skill.For other professions the "Camouflaged" effect would have the base benefit such as ignoring direct targeting which cuts out a massive percentage of skills in the game while also allowing some counter play. (you dont get away with insane things with no tell) Some weapons are even entirely voided without a direct target so the applications for this lesser stealth would still great benefit and keeps them from having the same prowess as thief with the same mechanic.

Other professions have more counter-play naturally opened up as their sustain through stealth becomes slightly lesser but not completely removed and will no longer commonly have the same effectiveness as thief all the time when it comes to sneak attacks or disengage.

Im ready for the "bad idea" Slaughter fest gg wp :cry:

It's fine. Camo sounds fun. All I'm worried about is that I will need better access to sustain and damage mitigation. Stealth -is- annoying, but under that stealth is a thief/mes that is basically praying you don't cleave him because they don't have any damage reduction and are using that lack of visual -as- their damage mitigation.If I can just see a thief by looking really closely (or by messing with my graphics settings), and any cleave I do just goes straight to his HP pool, I don't think that's good design.

If that issue is addressed, I really don't care how visible I am on thief.

That's why I was thinking it should prevent crit damage and possibly give you 1 sec of 1 stack of stab ever one seconds. How are you going to crit on someone you can't really see? The bit stab would prevent them from just getting instantly CC locked but could get hit by chain CC's if not careful.

See, now

That's

something I can get behind.I'd be fine removing stealth if the rework looked something like that and didnt break pve.

i included this idea i was thinking it could be a a trait or something in the shadow arts line but i dont think these kind of benefits should be a thing to other base professions that already have other methods of damage reduction or avoidance The idea was to make the benefits for thief while allowing some room for counter-play thats not guess cleaving and burning skills and utilities at random which feels extremely bad when they dont work.

As for the no critical hit thing once again im thinking thats a thief thing only. Thief should be the profession make the most use and benefit of any kind of stealth mechanic period other professions should literally not have common or equal power to stealth styles of play.

The pulsing stability thing i think should be out of the question for the most part though if anything it would be an optional thief trait at best.Keep in mind a lot of cc attacks require a target to hit accurately some of them you likely wont hit at all without a target and if camo prevents direct targeting most of the time (unless revealed) i dont think it will be easy to get chain cc'ed. or cc'ed period

Most people just generally agree that the current version of stealth is bad because counter-play is rng cleave guessing game and its also becomes obnoxious when people abuse it.Thief players say its bad because it does not do enough and its too easy to remove by certain professions which leaves them totally exposed.At the same time stealth on other professions like ranger and mesmer have become too plentiful allowing them more sustain from those tools than they should have and hides tells on big damage skills or burst which is also bad....

Ideally we need rework to the stealth aspect that addresses all of this.

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

@ZDragon.3046 said:i included this idea i was thinking it could be a a trait or something in the shadow arts line but i dont think these kind of benefits should be a thing to other base professions that already have other methods of damage reduction or avoidance The idea was to make the benefits for thief while allowing some room for counter-play thats not guess cleaving and burning skills and utilities at random which feels extremely bad when they dont work.

As for the no critical hit thing once again im thinking thats a thief thing only. Thief should be the profession make the most use and benefit of any kind of stealth mechanic period other professions should literally not have common or equal power to stealth styles of play.

Most people just generally agree that the current version of stealth is bad because counter-play is rng cleave guessing game and its also becomes obnoxious when people abuse it.Thief players say its bad because it does not do enough and its too easy to remove by certain professions which leaves them totally exposed.At the same time stealth on other professions like ranger and mesmer have become too plentiful allowing them more sustain from those tools than they should have and hides tells on big damage skills or burst which is also bad....

Ideally we need rework to the stealth aspect that addresses all of this.

Mybad, I missed that inclusion. I'm juggling a few things, but generally I agree with the above. Other classes with stealth access already have mitigation built in. If stealth gets removed entirely, though, you may want to also look at mesmers, because even though they have access to distortion they may need something to help bridge the gap on their glassier builds. I think ranger and engie will live.

The pulsing stability thing i think should be out of the question for the most part though if anything it would be an optional thief trait at best.Keep in mind a lot of cc attacks require a target to hit accurately some of them you likely wont hit at all without a target and if camo prevents direct targeting most of the time (unless revealed) i dont think it will be easy to get chain cc'ed. or cc'ed period

Eh. That's fair. I can do without the stab, as long as the mitigation is itself a thing. That's the major issue and that's all I really care about.

[Psycoprophet.8107]

A preditor type cloak like suggested would be a lot more balanced and more fun in my opinion than out right invisibility. if thief got invisibility as it does now when not moving and was given a few skills giving it 6 secs invisibility while moving to set up back stab bursts then I wouldn't think thief needs much more in the way of sustainability. I say this because nobody but the most unaware player would let a cloaked player back stab them lol be a useless skill. Also I feel aoe's being so prevalent in this game especially ranged ones and their damage potential to class like thief may be a issue in need of a workaround as any thief cloaked would just get aoe bombed constantly.

[ZDragon.3046]

@Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

@ZDragon.3046 said:i included this idea i was thinking it could be a a trait or something in the shadow arts line but i dont think these kind of benefits should be a thing to other base professions that already have other methods of damage reduction or avoidance The idea was to make the benefits for thief while allowing some room for counter-play thats not guess cleaving and burning skills and utilities at random which feels extremely bad when they dont work.

As for the no critical hit thing once again im thinking thats a thief thing only. Thief should be the profession make the most use and benefit of any kind of stealth mechanic period other professions should literally not have common or equal power to stealth styles of play.

Most people just generally agree that the current version of stealth is bad because counter-play is rng cleave guessing game and its also becomes obnoxious when people abuse it.Thief players say its bad because it does not do enough and its too easy to remove by certain professions which leaves them totally exposed.At the same time stealth on other professions like ranger and mesmer have become too plentiful allowing them more sustain from those tools than they should have and hides tells on big damage skills or burst which is also bad....

Ideally we need rework to the stealth aspect that addresses all of this.

Mybad, I missed that inclusion. I'm juggling a few things, but generally I agree with the above. Other classes with stealth access already have mitigation built in. If stealth gets removed entirely, though, you may want to also look at mesmers, because even though they have access to distortion they may need something to help bridge the gap on their glassier builds. I think ranger and engie will live.

You mean things like blocks?A wide boon table?Things that thief does not commonly have access to?I think maybe Mass invis giving true stealth would be enough but like the torch skill etc should most defiantly not be a true invis and no i dont think mesmers need that much as they have alot more things like blocks and wider general boon range that thieves do not have. Opting to go glassy should be a risk

shrug

The pulsing stability thing i think should be out of the question for the most part though if anything it would be an optional thief trait at best.Keep in mind a lot of cc attacks require a target to hit accurately some of them you likely wont hit at all without a target and if camo prevents direct targeting most of the time (unless revealed) i dont think it will be easy to get chain cc'ed. or cc'ed period

Eh. That's fair. I can do without the stab, as long as the mitigation is itself a thing. That's the major issue and that's all I really care about.

I think the mitigation needs to be there ideally things that make camo a bit unique and fun for theif without making it so they can just not engage under it. I think if they had some possible options for camo things like1s evasion on initial camo gaindamage reduction - no critsincreased movement speeddelayed drop out after attacking etcOntop of not being able to be directly targeted

Im not a designer like i aid but i think a lot of this is more than enough to work as mitigation. That said the idea is that it would still require some investment. though I think anet generally reworks things by design in most cases where stuff is just given to them for free. The last thing we need is a new stealth mechanic that gives too much fore free especially to other professions that are not thief.