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Suggestion for countering permastealth thieves/dead-eyes.


Ronin.4501

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8 hours ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

Yeah but let's not come in here and pretend they're "weak". They have the tools to be successful in everything but aoes for zergs.

You go to metabattle and they have 6 specs in wvw rated 5.0, while the other classes only have 1-3, that says something.

Stealth has a place in pvp, but not when it's basically 95% uptime loaded with perks. There's a reason why you don't see thieves fighting other thieves much.

 

But as I say every time now this topic comes up, stealth is never going to change in this game, it took beating a raid boss before they bothered looking into ghost thieves, the game isn't built to be "fair" or "balanced". Bring a bunch of friends, that's the roaming meta now.

Well, yes. but those tools are basically running away or dodging a few extra times, which only match certain type of players. I wouldn't dare to compare that with the tools that elementalists or guardians have. I'm not sure about how much fiable should metabattle be, but it really doesn't discover me anything, thief is the best roaming class because of its survival, but that's all.

 

8 hours ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

And every class can be built for one shot still? just imagine what those stealth classes were doing before the tone down last year.

Just name a class (not an elite spec like Druid 😛) and I will give you a oneshot build with the current balance, some of them even bringer more damage than thief... honestly I really don't know how can any WvW player even question this. By the way, what is even the point of this thread if thief has been already toned down.

8 hours ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

But as I say every time now this topic comes up, stealth is never going to change in this game, it took beating a raid boss before they bothered looking into ghost thieves

Here is a video of an elementalist taking down a raid boss.

Gw2: Cairn solo [32:31] | Condi Weaver - YouTube

Edited by Telgum.6071
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How much more counters do you even need against stealth so you dont feel bad ?

Sentry's apply a 30 sec reveal
Towers have a Forever reveal
2 Types of traps against stealth that give 30 sec reveal

+ Most classes have acces to a reveal.

Learn how to play rather because even if you think you do,you apparantly really dont.

Theres also a thing as being outplayed,someone being better as you are. But i bet you wont ever acknowledge that fact. Because "Everything that kills me is running some broken spec".

Edited by Caedmon.6798
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1 hour ago, Caedmon.6798 said:

How much more counters do you even need against stealth so you dont feel bad ?

Sentry's apply a 30 sec reveal
Towers have a Forever reveal
2 Types of traps against stealth that give 30 sec reveal

+ Most classes have acces to a reveal.

Learn how to play rather because even if you think you do,you apparantly really dont.

Theres also a thing as being outplayed,someone being better as you are. But i bet you wont ever acknowledge that fact. Because "Everything that kills me is running some broken spec".

First, having to rely on structures, npc or absolutely garbage and basically unusable mid combat "traps" to counter another player does not scream balance to me, considering that anything else can be dealt with just fine without outside help.

 

Second, the problem isn't so much about countering stealth or thieves in general - it is more about countering SA d/p daredevil in particular (and SA DE to a lesser extent). Against those builds "some reveal" alone does not cut it (if it is even a feasible option - for a lot of builds it isn't), because those builds have plenty of tools to survive and wait out reveal, then come back and go for the kill anyway. And if it takes them 10 attempts, it still does not matter, because they can try again and again. And finally getting a kill after multiple failed attemps without any real risk of getting punished is hardly a matter of "outplaying" someone.

 

Even Sic'em Slb - which is often considered the the best counter to SA D/P - only really works against mediocre thieves. At higher skill lvl (for both players) it is a losing 1vs1 matchup for the ranger, because it does not have enough sustain in the long run and it's offense can be shut down fairly easily, even during phases of reveal.

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The counter to stealth is a build that can sustain better than the thief can hit and run (or hit and stealth).

 

Running a bruiser build and doing a laugh emote each time a thief looking for a kill re-stealthes over and over again (because he can't harm you) is part of the fun of WvW.

 

The mechanic itself is dumb, but at least ANet balances thief in a way, that the unkillable thieves also can't kill decent roaming builds (this is the part where teef mains start whining about lacking damage).

 

If you are the lonely full zerk staff ele looking for your blob... then yeah you will have a hard time.

Edited by KrHome.1920
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As a Thief main I have nothing, I cannot participate in Zerg fights the same way other classes can, most players with a brain can track me in stealth, I cannot play how I want next to towers or sentries, I have been nerfed patch after patch after patch.

 

But reading posts like this makes it all worth it, thank you for your tears OP. Delicious.

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This suggestion is pointless.

1) If I one shot you from stealth, blight is irrelevant. 

2) If you couldn't get my minstrel permastealth DE build down to 50% health before blight, you won't kill me with blight. 

For those two reasons, nothing will change and you'll still be complaining about stealth instead of learning to use reveals/target painters. 

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9 hours ago, KrHome.1920 said:

The counter to stealth is a build that can sustain better than the thief can hit and run (or hit and stealth).

 

Running a bruiser build and doing a laugh emote each time a thief looking for a kill re-stealthes over and over again (because he can't harm you) is part of the fun of WvW.

 

The mechanic itself is dumb, but at least ANet balances thief in a way, that the unkillable thieves also can't kill decent roaming builds (this is the part where teef mains start whining about lacking damage).

 

If you are the lonely full zerk staff ele looking for your blob... then yeah you will have a hard time.

 

Generally agreed though even the builds which *don't* play into the disengage/don't die/"unkillable" trope don't have sufficient damage which is where most of the complaints come from.  Like, the loss of going from a full-offense core build to the meta SA D/P Daredevil is only like a 10% loss in overall damage in a burst combo when all things are accounted for.

 

For that reason it's never worthwhile to bother going for the assassinations or more upfront builds.  Those super strong bruiser/offtank roamer builds can't be cut down by the pure glass options.  Generally I deal more damage on DC+RSAAx1 on my reaper than my full backstab combo on my thief, which even at 4k power and 261 crit damage, hits for like... 8k total with 40s of cooldowns burned to do it, which is why I stopped playing thief; the build people complain about is not fun imho, so I opt for something else.

 

The design of SA promoting sustain in conjunction with high relative mobility and the constant resetting **of resources via trait ineractions** is and always has been a problem.  The old archived forums have posts from me talking about this literally since 2012.  It doesn't really matter how much damage or lack thereof thief deals when it can safely grind people down and recover.  It's not a big deal in sPvP (thief dominance there is a whole different can of worms than what most people complain about), however things break quickly in WvW when it can afford to just keep trying and escape failure over and over.  Daredevil and DE both massively played into these strengths (and in the case of DrD is just straight-up powercreep across multiple other build paths inherently), and is also why core keeps getting its damage nerfed and why nobody is happy with the end result except for the people who like to play the very (imho boring) safe setups where the class just endlessly resets.

 

In general for the rest of the people looking:

 

Stealth - even mid-combat stealth - on its own is actually really not threatening once you learn the general play pattern.  Most people however never do the research.  Prior to DrD, I could pretty consistently CnD + Backstab a stealthed thief in a duel, both of which are single-target skills with the latter also requiring me to face the right way.  Again, Daredevil upsets this by obfuscating even further a mechanic (stealth) and its relative play patterns which could previously be learned and countered.

 

The issue thief has is its entire existence is balled up in this idea of having these defenses totally control the class's ability to function across all of its build paths, even ones which don't abuse them.  Unlike most other classes which have clear-cut strengths/weaknesses on weapon skills or individual traits which make them OP or too weak, the thief's mechanics are such where there's a ton of overlay where mechanics are exploited in some builds way more than others, and generalized complaints of the mechanics aren't inherently the problem.  Nobody complains about P/P thief having and heavily depending on Dash/teleports or D/D power's access to mid-combat stealth.

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20 hours ago, Telgum.6071 said:

Well, yes. but those tools are basically running away or dodging a few extra times, which only match certain type of players. I wouldn't dare to compare that with the tools that elementalists or guardians have. I'm not sure about how much fiable should metabattle be, but it really doesn't discover me anything, thief is the best roaming class because of its survival, but that's all.

 

Just name a class (not an elite spec like Druid 😛) and I will give you a oneshot build with the current balance, some of them even bringer more damage than thief... honestly I really don't know how can any WvW player even question this. By the way, what is even the point of this thread if thief has been already toned down.

Here is a video of an elementalist taking down a raid boss.

Gw2: Cairn solo [32:31] | Condi Weaver - YouTube

 

"Basically for only running or dodging..."

"Best roaming class because of it's survival."

And the dps I might add. So like I said they have more than enough tools to be successful in every situation.

 

Hmmmmmmmm condi weaver solo's a boss and doesn't get nerfed, condi rev solo's a boss and gets a torment buff, ghost thief solo's a boss and gets nerfed to the point that one entire skill line got reworked. That says something.

 

But hey last spec gave them dodge stealth and remove revealed after years of putting in more reveals, with enough lamenting I'm sure the next spec will elevate them again.

 

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47 minutes ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

"Basically for only running or dodging..."

"Best roaming class because of it's survival."

And the dps I might add. So like I said they have more than enough tools to be successful in every situation.

 

I don't know man, if for sucessful you mean being able to escape... we have different ideas of being sucessful so is pointless to discuss that.

 

 

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Topic mentions thieves specifically, but really stealth is the problem regardless of class.

 

Engis can one-shot nade people from stealth, ranger can disengage from 1500 with stealth, thieves can use it to no end to reset fights...

 

Also, traps are literally not an answer when as someone posted earlier, they were meant to track movement of groups not to throw at individuals.  

 

I think whatever they did to mesmer they need to apply across the board, as mesmer shatter out of stealth used to be super problematic and now it's barely seen.  Not saying over-nerfing is a good idea, but it made the mesmer a lot more balanced to fight against IMO.  

 

Or, as the topic suggests---add blight while you are in stealth.  Even losing 1-2k hp is going to hurt a lot on a thief that typically doesn't have a ton of HP to begin with unless they build for marauder or minstrel or something, and in that case they won't be doing ludicrous amounts of damage anyway. 

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20 hours ago, Sons.5493 said:

As a Thief main I have nothing, I cannot participate in Zerg fights the same way other classes can, most players with a brain can track me in stealth, I cannot play how I want next to towers or sentries, I have been nerfed patch after patch after patch.

 

But reading posts like this makes it all worth it, thank you for your tears OP. Delicious.

Well, join the club. Only 3 maybe 4 classes can actually participate in zergs, anyone can participate in zerg fights.. You can't play how you want next to towers and sentries? Boo-hoo, people can't fight things they can't even see aka thieves. Nerfs? Dude, thieves are still beyond broken in roaming and small scale. You F up? No problemo, gone with the wind.

So please, spare us your bs.

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40 minutes ago, hobotnicax.7918 said:

Well, join the club. Only 3 maybe 4 classes can actually participate in zergs, anyone can participate in zerg fights.. You can't play how you want next to towers and sentries? Boo-hoo, people can't fight things they can't even see aka thieves. Nerfs? Dude, thieves are still beyond broken in roaming and small scale. You F up? No problemo, gone with the wind.

So please, spare us your bs.

Even if you can see them as soon as they mess up the just teleport to unreachable places or a floor up across the ground.

Definitely it is just a waste of time fighting a thief. 

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People get salty about trying to 3v1 a thief and then the thief uses stealth or mobility to avoid getting killed. But that's the intended design here.
 

Superior mobility always wins out in Xv1 situations as far as disengage is concerned. Even a old school mobility warrior with superior mobility will be able to disengage from a X v 1 where they have the most mobility.

 

Is that unfair? No it's mobility in a game mode where escaping unfavorable situations is part of the game. They built for mobility and you didn't? Tough. Stealth is part of thief mobility in the sense that it helps them move undetected (moving in opposite direction of opponents to build distance for instance). 

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6 hours ago, hobotnicax.7918 said:

Well, join the club. Only 3 maybe 4 classes can actually participate in zergs, anyone can participate in zerg fights.. You can't play how you want next to towers and sentries? Boo-hoo, people can't fight things they can't even see aka thieves. Nerfs? Dude, thieves are still beyond broken in roaming and small scale. You F up? No problemo, gone with the wind.

So please, spare us your bs.

the only two classes that have no use really in zergs or blobs are ranger and thief. so this "3 or 4 classes" is such a joke of a statement. (ranger a bit more bc it can selfsustain and run sb axe/axe + gs for melee cleave and leech kills that way)

 

and guys. honestly, are u only playing ONE SINGLE CLASS in this whole game? how even? i

played my warrior also for most of the time as a newbie (six months, roughly), but by the time u get serious with a potentially competitive structured pvp game mode, which largescale zergfights in wvw can be, you should be able to play at least three different classes on a good level.

that's the requirement for application towards serious Wvw guilds, normally.

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6 hours ago, hobotnicax.7918 said:

Well, join the club. Only 3 maybe 4 classes can actually participate in zergs, anyone can participate in zerg fights.. You can't play how you want next to towers and sentries? Boo-hoo, people can't fight things they can't even see aka thieves. Nerfs? Dude, thieves are still beyond broken in roaming and small scale. You F up? No problemo, gone with the wind.

So please, spare us your bs.

I would take Shadow Meld like a good Deadeye but I chose to take Basilik Venom to help fight people who go into stealth, that's a trade off and a build choice but one I decided I needed to make. Even aside from that, guessing where someone will be at the moment they go into stealth isn't some mystery, especially if you see what they're using to activate it. Someone being forced to go into stealth is normally the best time to crack them with Cloak and Dagger or something fluid and reliable to land. I'm not saying you can shut someone down while they're in stealth, Stealth is supposed to be an advantage when making an attempt.

 

Maybe a couple of builds if that are kind of broken if we're all funneling into optimal builds but if you're claiming thieves in general can just walk around flexing on everyone without getting exploded instantly then you're lying about your own perspective or you don't actually have one. Use your own advantages and think about your build choices to answer theirs but if you really want thieves priced out of everything but auto with nerfs because you think they'll still be strong then you're troubles will be plenty regardless what happens. 

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All the cry babies about stealth mostly run in groups of minimum 10 - 50. They run or port when you see them solo. And when they do get caught out of their forever sustain blob they start crying on the forum. 

You never played thief,ever. If you did you know youre wrong.

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16 hours ago, Caedmon.6798 said:

All the cry babies about stealth mostly run in groups of minimum 10 - 50. They run or port when you see them solo. And when they do get caught out of their forever sustain blob they start crying on the forum. 

You never played thief,ever. If you did you know youre wrong.


I roam solo near 100% of the time with my ranger and fight outnumbered quite often and can defeat my fair share of players even when outnumbered. I generally don’t have any problems fighting any class including thief/deadeye unless they have built for permastealth, in which case it’s not worth the time and effort playing hide and seek only for them to kill you while being carried by stealth. 
 

 

 

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20 hours ago, Caedmon.6798 said:

All the cry babies about stealth mostly run in groups of minimum 10 - 50. They run or port when you see them solo. And when they do get caught out of their forever sustain blob they start crying on the forum. 

You never played thief,ever. If you did you know youre wrong.

i mean which sane person would 1v1 a thief on a zergbuild? alone because if u could kill them, chances are good there's two more nearby that come to gank you. so ofc, i do port there. no sense making challenge to play by their rules. same as u do by running away with a billion of shadowsteps and ports and permastealth

 

the blobs are mostly wiping to other blobs in one push bc they're so squishy and support so slacking

 

u smallscale people believing u should be able to wipe 50 guys with your ranger or thief is just amazing, every single time.

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Thanks to @DeceiverX.8361 for a good post and attempting to get back on track and discuss balance in a thread that otherwise has regressed down to bad posts pointing fingers and calling names.

 

One thing occured to me though that I wanted to float as a talking point (we'll see if this will get just as overlooked as Deceiver's good post got). I read @Caedmon.6798 earlier post where he listed four counters to stealth. Three of which are not part of class balance and one of which (he indirectly admits is flawed by his phrasing) is part of class balance.

 

What if we took away all those supplies and towers things and gave reveals the stunbreak treatment? You know, where one utility in each category is given a reveal mechanic. That would enable more readily available access to reveal (so it is most, not just some) and conscious choices of taking or not taking reveals - either actively building away from them rather than going out of your way to chase them or that you go out of your way to stack them for counterplay.

 

Would that be fair? Reveals added to skills just like stunbreak. I'm not saying it is an end-all solution to everything regarding the balance of stealth or Thieves. I just think it is an interesting alternative to float and see what sticks.

 

Edit. This isn't the first time I've thought about it tbh, but in the past I've been a bit more cautious with it because I've always felt that larger-scale balance of stealth is quite fair and might get cheapened with reveals available everywhere. However, I think in recent times the whole gyro-push thing has become a bit too prevalent and even if it certainly isn't a balance issue there and more an actual issue of people not knowing how to deal with it, I think we're at a point where it may be helpful even for larger scale if reveal was more available so experienced players to carry that aspect of tactics and show people how reveals work. Normally, I am against balancing after behaviour but I see it being less and less of a problem is this one situation.

Edited by subversiontwo.7501
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9 minutes ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

Would that be fair? Reveals added to skills just like stunbreak. I'm not saying it is an end-all solution to everything regarding the balance of stealth or Thieves. I just think it is an interesting alternative to float and see what sticks.

 

While I see where you are coming from, stunbreaks are a counter to all professions and have a use in PvE as well. What you are suggesting would primarily target a single profession in PvP/WvW that was designed around it. My reticence has less to do with the feeling that it would break Thieves, and more to do with the suspicion it would not satisfy the complaints. If it were baked into a utility with a moderate cooldown, it would be highly situational and would require a lot of skill to use well. I don’t think skilled players are having a lot of problems with a single use of Stealth, so it would give them additional advantages they don’t need and do nothing to help the survivability of those complaining loudest.

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16 minutes ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

Thanks to @DeceiverX.8361 for a good post and attempting to get back on track and discuss balance in a thread that otherwise has regressed down to bad posts pointing fingers and calling names.

 

One thing occured to me though that I wanted to float as a talking point (we'll see if this will get just as overlooked as Deceiver's good post got). I read @Caedmon.6798 earlier post where he listed four counters to stealth. Three of which are not part of class balance and one of which (he indirectly admits is flawed by his phrasing) is part of class balance.

 

What if we took away all those supplies and towers things and gave reveals the stunbreak treatment? You know, where one utility in each category is given a reveal mechanic. That would enable more readily available access to reveal (so it is most, not just some) and conscious choices of taking or not taking reveals - either actively building away from them rather than going out of your way to chase them or that you go out of your way to stack them for counterplay.

 

Would that be fair? Reveals added to skills just like stunbreak. I'm not saying it is an end-all solution to everything regarding the balance of stealth or Thieves. I just think it is an interesting alternative to float and see what sticks.

 

Edit. This isn't the first time I've thought about it tbh, but in the past I've been a bit more cautious with it because I've always felt that larger-scale balance of stealth is quite fair and might get cheapened with reveals available everywhere. However, I think in recent times the whole gyro-push thing has become a bit too prevalent and even if it certainly isn't a balance issue there and more an actual issue of people not knowing how to deal with it, I think we're at a point where it may be helpful even for larger scale if reveal was more available so experienced players to carry that aspect of tactics and show people how reveals work. Normally, I am against balancing after behaviour but I see it being less and less of a problem is this one situation.

If people still complain about Conditions when they're easier to manage than ever, I guarantee people would still complain about Stealth if every class had 1 - 3 Reveals.

The vast majority of players don't care about bringing the right tools for the right job. They want to blame others for using those tools.

Edited by Shroud.2307
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1 minute ago, Shroud.2307 said:

Fair, yes. Would people use it, no.

If people still complain about Conditions when they're easier to manage than ever, I guarantee people would still complain about Stealth if every class had 1 - 3 Reveals.

The vast majority of players don't care about bringing the right tools for the right job. They want to blame others for doing so.

I'm sure they would, but we're not talking about complaints, we are talking about balance, specifically suggestions for countering current stealth balance, as per the thread title 🙂 .

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