[What should Anet do with stealth in competitive game modes?]

9 hours ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

And if thieves want to point out their class cannot function without stealth, a willbender shows what a thief should have been without the stealth.

Yeah, just with y'know, consistent access to Aegis, strong anti-condition traits and skills, and way more sustain.

[Deadeye needs a nerf]

Don't mind me, just stealthing in to collect some salt to level cooking.

[Elite Spec Tradeoff was a joke?]

On 5/3/2024 at 2:50 PM, Dawdler.8521 said:

Anets favorite stealth baby known as the daredevil is an exception though - in fact they have still never nerfed blackpowder since HoT, it's only been buffed.

Wait wut.

Black Powder has only ever been buffed twice. Once bringing the radius from 120 to 180, and the second time making the smoke field itself unblockable. Which were back in 2020/2021 respectively,

Every other change to it has been an effective nerf, either by lowering the amount of blind pulses, or by making the blinding shot portion of it tied to a bullet and therefore dodgeable or reflectable.

 

And daredevil isn't even the good stealth elite spec lol.

[How to properly nerf thief for pvp and wvw]

4 minutes ago, Eugenides.1274 said:

I don't know how else you would describe back to back to back Black Powder -> Bound / Black Powder -> Heartseeker / Sniper's Cover -> Death's Advance / Cloak and Dagger (on walls) chaining other than degenerate gameplay. Just because other classes can do similar things doesn't make it a false statement (classes can have similar issues). We've all fought those thieves where all you have to do is sneeze on them in a fight and then they stealth chain for 30 seconds waiting for cooldowns.

Chaining and init dumping into stealth only activates the entrance part though. So kinda self defeating in the long run, especially with Anet's longstanding nerfs toward Thief initiative costs. Plus if you force a thief to back off for 30 seconds on his cooldowns while you cap a point? Congrats, you win the fight.

13 minutes ago, Eugenides.1274 said:

Sure, if they're just chaining stealth they're not damaging you but I personally don't think it's a healthy gameplay style.

You dont think this is a healthy gameplay style, and half of us thieves don't feel willbender's current design is a healthy gameplay style. We're free to our own opinions.

14 minutes ago, Eugenides.1274 said:

I don't think changing Shadow Rejuvenation to reward on attacking from stealth would kill the traitline. You could even make it give 4 or 5 initiative since you have to proc revealed to get initiative back.

It wouldn't kill the trainline, it'd do the opposite. Most PvP/WvW Thieves would be MORE forced to take it. Our other traitlines simply aren't viable half the time with half the weapons. There's a strong reason we constantly use D/P or Rifle, and it's because those are the only weapons we can make work against most targets. D/P because it lets us use a majority of our kit most of the time, and it has incredibly utility through on demand daze from pistol 4, and smoke fields on pistol 5. Rifle because it is quite literally our ONLY viable long range choice. Pistol is a one trick pony, and dead in the water immediatly after, while shortbow only sees use because Infiltrator's Arrow is simply too good to pass up because of Z axis mobility.

SA will continue being the only other choice alongside Trickery, simply because it allows us to survive in the current meta of boon and condition spam. It has both condition removal entering/exiting stealth, and a tiny bit of healing. Otherwise a condi bomb will kinda just delete thieves.

 

21 minutes ago, Eugenides.1274 said:

I'm also personally okay with seeing builds other than d/p or rifle SA.

Once they're viable to play over the current mainstays, you will. But because of how the game is currently balanced, Thief will constantly have Trickery and SA staple glued to their sides.

[How to properly nerf thief for pvp and wvw]

1 hour ago, Eugenides.1274 said:

In PvP and WvW even if you adjust the current values Shadow Rejuvenation rewards degenerate gameplay a bit too much in my opinion. Making it reward you for hitting with a stealth attack is a healthier approach they could take if they want to rework it.

For example, "Gain X initiative when you strike an enemy with a stealth attack." or even "Gain X initiative when striking an enemy from stealth." You could potentially add secondary effects to the trait or make it give back higher amount of initiative if it feels too weak since the thief ends up being revealed when proccing it.

Degenerate gameplay? It encourages popping in and out of stealth, instead of constantly stacking it. Which is effectively just a glorified target break. I dont really see how that could be considered degenerate, considering a chunk of Mirage's kit does the same thing.

SA as a whole got rebalanced to move away from stealth stacking literally because people complained about "degenerate gameplay", to this system of encouraging constantly dancing between stealthed and unstealthed. If it's nerfed further, it's probably gonna end up a dead traitline and then you get to deal with acro/tricks/DD sword/dagger duelists again.

[nerf thief and deedaye]

6 hours ago, kiranslee.4829 said:

Just delete SA traitline. I would pay to see tears of thieves being forced to l2p :D.

We'll just go back to Tricks/Deadly/Crit strikes like we used to kekw

[Marked Players and Stealth - Why do they still disappear?]

On 12/18/2023 at 1:33 PM, kash.9213 said:

The form of mitigation that still mostly allows full damage and contact got you so shook, you're asking for one for the most busted Backstabs in any game. I don't want to see what a 45 second cooldown Stealth Attack looks like. 

brb hitting someone with the 45 second cooldown Death's Judgement that has 5k range, 100% crit, 100% life steal, rips all boons, immobilizes target on use, unblockable, and hits for 30k damage, ignoring all armor.

[Marked Players and Stealth - Why do they still disappear?]

Because Marked isnt designed to completely shut out a core mechanic of a class. It's there to mitigate the ability for people to constantly hide, so they cant just hide inside a tower/keep once it flips.

It's also more so made as a mechanic to allow defenders the ability to know something is coming.

If the target loss is one of your main complaints against stealth, then do you also believe that mesmer skills that drop target should also be nerfed?

[Thief invisible...]

2 hours ago, kidbuu.4071 said:

While, I hear what you're saying mathematically you still can't do that within 3 seconds. You can't compile over 4 and 1/2 seconds of cast time into 3 seconds. That's not how math works. 

Then I'll address  this specifically to you.  how can you expect to have a legitimate conversation regarding this topic in this or your perceived issue, If you're insulting or devaluing a specialization and or class the conversation becomes disingenuous. I don't walk into a discussion and immediately start insulting someone or a specialization/group and then expect them to have an informed discussion regarding this to come up with actual solutions to better a situation.

If you're saying to delete stealth my same argument would be then you would have to delete the other strong mitigations in the same game mode. Meaning you couldn't have any of the wonderful capabilities that mesmer have or the unique characteristics of dragon hunter much less guardian in the game because then there would be no counterplay to those capabilities. I do agree there are some changes to stealth that do need to be made but to start insulting the class and the community that it plays the class inside the thief forums probably won't benefit your argument much less, Have anyone from the powers that be looking at what you're expressing. 

I think you have some potential ideas and I would love to hear you express them more meticulously in this space and I encourage you to express them with emphasis to solutions. Not just complaining about something that you don't like. We can all do better and we all want better for this game. At least that's my perception.

Wrong person to quote, buu

I'm saying that the complaints about thief from the few more egregious outcries here are highly exaggerated, and trying to put some mathematical context to it, before going into the actual gameplay context of no one would ever use step and steal just to run away.

>_>

[Thief invisible...]

6 hours ago, TrollingDemigod.3041 said:

So... one elite spec can potentially catch-up to that and threaten teefs, 1 out of 36.
I leave rest of math to you. 
On top of that, there's a lot more tools for mobility that can be put on teefs skill bar that would increase that range by a lot...

Let's assume its the most average D/P Daredevil thief. The only mobility choices on such a build are shadowstep, steal, and shadow shot. Only two can be used to escape, Shadowstep and Steal. 1200+1200+450 comes out to 2850 distance. Let's even add on top of that with Shortbow 5, Infiltrators arrow. 900 distance. So an absolute maximum of 3750 over the course of 3 seconds (which is a bit of a stretch in 3 seconds alone), assuming that your only stunbreak wasn't used in the fight, and the core mechanic of the class wasnt used in the fight.

A situation that doesnt really happen. Unless it's a pve thief that doesnt want to fight players at all, which is kind of an outlier in this discussion.

[Thief invisible...]

1 minute ago, TrollingDemigod.3041 said:

In PvP the clowns are atleast forced to dance within the circle so the possibilities are tiny bit more limited but in WvW it's different story. The 3s stealth can equal up to like what? 3000+ range of traveled distance within 3s of stealth in radius of the entry point of stealth? Maybe even more than that. So you kinda have to guess a possible movement within that 3k+ range around the place you last saw teef. "It may or may not happen" is kinda garbage gameplay.
Delete stealth, problem fixed, teefs will jump to evade spam clowning with abusive ports but atleast they'll be visible.

I'm curious as to what skills you think a thief is using to do that?
1200 from Shadowstep
1200 from Steal (if they burn it on movement? which isnt really done)
450 from each Heartseeker

So burning two major cooldowns and most initiative, leaving them completely open to a chase down depending on who theyre fighting. Because a willbender can catch up real quick.

[Thief invisible...]

3 hours ago, Birdie.3869 said:

Yes, that's why I mentioned aoes, the things that don't require you have a target to initiate the attack.

Yes, if you fight a bad thief who over extends too much or too often you can beat them. Yes if you get lucky you can land a CC on a thief, enjoy knowing to follow up on it on an invisible target, though.

Not even just aoe's. Most abilities dont require a target, I cant even remember how many times i've gotten caught my cheeky guardians with hammers, or anyone who has the experience to quick 180 to mitigate backstab damage because most thieves will wait till near the end of stealth before backstabbing to maximize initiative regain and healing. I've said it a million times, but Thief is a noob killer. It preys on lack of experience, but once you know how to fight a thief, they become far less troublesome than other classes. And not too many people pick it up and keep running a thief, because it's far easier to pick up just about any other class.

 

3 hours ago, Birdie.3869 said:

It's not my problem to balance thief, I'm talking about invisibility in general. If you're not being sarcastic and do want my two cents though, I guess buff their acrobatics line so dodge thief works even better. Enjoy daredevil being immortal instead of shadow arts thieves. At least you can see a dodging daredevil.
Heck, I'd be fine with them gaining an extra bar of dodge by default if it means I can time my dodges like I should be able to.

The problem here is that thieves in their current design, it needs to be more than one traitline redesigned. Trickery in its current iteration needs to have some parts just rolled into general passives, because every single PvP or WvW build borderline requires it because of the extra initiative, the 15% damage boost via initiative spent, and the init on steal. Because Anet "balanced" abilities by upping initiative costs, it's forced Trickery to be a borderline mandatory trait line to remain competitive.

And fun fact, Acrobatics was actually gutted just before HoT because it overlapped with Daredevil too much. Several Daredevil traits were actually in Acrobatics before, so buffing it now probably wouldnt make thieves too bad. But with the current design of thief, it's not really viable to run Acrobatics without both trickery and critical strikes, and that locks you out of elite specs. It just doesnt bring enough damage to the table without building completely for damage, but none of the elite specs really allow that.

3 hours ago, Birdie.3869 said:

And yes as I stated in my original post, it should work like hide in shadows for everyone. They should have an outline, but still be very hard to see. It's already a huge advantage even with the outline, and currently it has none.
I'd also be fine with some additional reveal being added that's usable by all specs instead of specific ones that you don't need to massively sacrifice survivability or damage to use.

The problem here is that because of how intrinsic stealth is to Thief's kit, more so than any other class, any nerf to it almost requires some form of return for Thieves so that they arent more heavily screwed by it.

Also, the whole reason Hide in Shadows is a thing for mesmers, is because it's actually BETTER than stealth. It has a maximum of 9 stacks, so if you gave that to thieves, you'd be making stealth arguably stronger than currently. Thief stealth currently has a stack maximum of 5, so 15 seconds total. Hide in Shadows can go up to 9, at 27 seconds. So yea, give it to thieves are your own peril lol.

[Thief invisible...]

2 hours ago, Birdie.3869 said:

My man, you cannot target someone who is in stealth. It also removes call targets/set targets.
I also said most aoe as someone in stealth can just, y'know, not stand in an aoe.

It's a good thing we play a game where a target isnt always required to initiate attacks.

Any pvp'r with experience knows you have to play mind games with thieves, and use certain attacks to fish for them in stealth. And stealth doesn't make you immune to CC either. 

 

Here's a genuine question. How do you want stealth to work? Exactly like mesmer's hide in shadows? What passive or additional mitigation are you gonna give to thief to make up for it?

[Thief invisible...]

51 minutes ago, Birdie.3869 said:

how is invisibility negating all targeted damage and most aoe damage not?

Because it doesn't? You still get fully hit in stealth. It's why knowing how to fight a thief is important. 

[#nerf deadeye.]

#no

[Thief Stealth is Truly OP As You Can Get [Merged]]

Now where did I leave my popcorn...

 

🍿

[Thief Stealth is Truly OP As You Can Get [Merged]]

I don't think most people will ever actually sit and learn how to fight Thief, tbh. Any class built on subversion and disguising intent will inherently be one of the most frustrating to face, to the point where people will just avoid dealing with them.

1 hour ago, kash.9213 said:

S/D can get neglected by the devs but it feels natural and it also handles WvW topography better than a lot of other kits. S/D skills are fluid and responsive and it's easier to move with a moving fight when most of your kit doesn't need to have a target selected. I'll probably always have it on one of my most used templates. 

Also helps that S/D is honestly one of the most fashionable and aesthetic sets to work with, tbh. It just hits right when you have that good set and design to work with.

[[Srge][Video] Smallscale very heavily outnumbered]

I mean, having fought some members of Srge individually, y'all are good at what you do, but at the same time running 3 support builds in a 5 man group is kinda silly. Fought your 5/6 man groups on GoM a couple times this week too, and we had to pull at least double your number usually from the roamers to get through three or four support/healer builds lol.

This is just another prime example of Anet neglecting to adjust the power of boons compared to the original design, despite giving extreme application to most builds.

[Your most hated specs to fight against?]

4 hours ago, Zizekent.2398 said:

It's just not true, except maybe willbender and willbender doesnt even has stealth.

 

Not comparing power mesmer to thief, power mesmer runs out of gas faster and is also countered by thief, or willbender that doesnt even has stealth 🗿

(and i'm not even saying this to defend willbender because yes, willbender is broken, but i can see them)

 

Are you playing or killing 11k hp thieves? As i said in my past comment, if a thief died, is because THEY wanted to, honestly, this class has such a good mobility + stealth spam to disengage that if you died, it was 100% your mistake, specially if it was against melee builds.

And im not even talking about p/p cele/trailblazer condi thief yet 💀

If you wanna discuss something, at least quote the whole comment and not small out of context parts of a comment. It's just for a better communication i promise.

Genuine question, have you played thief in WvW for an extended period of time? Because as of late, Thief has been steadily outclassed in most of its previously strongest areas, due to power creep from new elite specs, relics, and other factors.

Willbender genuinely has better burst movement and burst damage, while also packing the sustain that Thief so sorely lacks. Thief has stealth for its own form of sustain through obscuration. And it's not like they're unhittable in stealth either. One strong condi bomb on a thief? Gonna take repeatedly stealthing/unstealthing to clear if theyre running SA, and most of the time you can't do it fast enough. 

Power mesmer may gas out faster, but it accelerates at a much higher pace, especially with the new Weaponmaster stuff. 25 Vuln stacks in an opening hit, followed by shatters? Hurts like heck, man. I will admit that thief normally does counter mesmer, but with how strong Cele builds are, as well as the ability to boonstack to an insane level has severely mitigated what burst can do. Not to mention that Mirage can just laugh and make their clones evade if they're running Infinite Horizon.

 

And on the 11k health bit, please. It's genuinely easy for almost any build to be able to do 11k damage in VERY quick order.  Hell, I've seen Cele builds able to do that much in the span of a few seconds.

One final note, for P/P Cele DD. One target painter ruins their entire day. There isnt enough burst damage to stop you from using one real quick. (I will say though, let that build die. It's a blot on the class)

[Your most hated specs to fight against?]

3 hours ago, Zizekent.2398 said:

so much mobility

Ranger, guardian, and dagger ele have better mobility 

Edit: should note that I mean Willbender guard, not core/DH/FB

 

3 hours ago, Zizekent.2398 said:

instant port bursts and stealth

Mesmer does this too. And willbender does the insta port bursting just as well, if not better.

 

3 hours ago, Zizekent.2398 said:

who even needs to be tanky when you have such GOOD resources

Because once you actually catch the thief, they pop like a balloon. 

[Your most hated specs to fight against?]

power block mirage running sword. Just genuinely one of the only builds i rage against because to me its just incredibly unfun to fight.

[Is it just me.... or is Deadeye pretty strong right now?]

Deadeye can be as strong as any of the top meta contenders, but as long as the top meta contenders can pack a lot of ranged hate/reflect, DE won't find much play.

[What is Thief's niche now in WvW?]

As of late, it feels like Thief has had its niche taken over by the elite specs of other classes.

Willbender acts effectively as a better assassin. Mesmer and Ranger act as better long range burst classes.

Firebrand, Revenant, and Mesmer make for better supports than Specter can hope to be once you're above 5 people. 

 

I'm honestly kind of scrambling for strings, but what do y'all feel Thief's niche is? What can it do better than others, that ACTUALLY effects combat and group play?

[Stealth counter]

10 minutes ago, andrewlcl.8176 said:

Don't be ridiculous about Willbender. I've never been erased by one as quick as with a thief, and I've made light work of many of them using a deadeye. 

You havent fought good ones then. Just like old guard, willbender can kill someone just as fast as thief.

 

12 minutes ago, andrewlcl.8176 said:

Put up rifle Kneel 4 wall, and just dance around them.

The singular rectangle wall that they can just walk around? Or use a non-projectile to get around? The problem with Cele Harb is purely a stat thing. Too many passive stat boosts on top of bloated boon design currently, makes cele harb have effectively as many stats in condi/power as dedicated stat sets, while maintaining all the other stuff.

 

Just now, Teknomancer.4895 said:

Or maybe convert the current stealth mechanic into being a boon instead...that way it's at least theoretically possible to strip it like any other boon and cause the reveal.

That would make concentration work on stealth. And boon copying abilities work on stealth. That would get out of hand REAL quick.

[Stealth counter]

1 minute ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

But sure OK I would be perfectly fine with lowering the initiative cost by 1 point for dropping the smoke field.

Genuinely not sure if serious. Remove the single biggest effect of a skill, lower cost by 1 initiative. At that point, Shadowshot is legitimately just a better ability on the same weapon, if running D/P. P/P loses its ability to consistently throw blind out via blackpowder -> unload.

 

Black powder cannot have its smoke field removed without then rebalancing pistol offhand as a whole for thief. And even then, stealth based gameplay is the most core design FOR thief, there's an entire trait line built around it.