Perma Stealth Thiefs - What to do?

[Ged Kealmen.7210]

My humble opinion, after mostly solo roaming for 3800+ ranks and fighting countless thieves of all build variations and skill levels... stealth needs to be nerfed a bit. Not too much. Thief damage is fine, my issue is the lack of counters to stealth and the abuse of attacking from stealth and popping right back into stealth or just running away.

Either increase cooldowns on stealth generation just a bit, or cause forced reveal after attacks. A heavy first attack from stealth is fine, it makes sense, but constant stealth-attack-restealth-attack-restealth-attack ad infinitum is excessive.

If the idea is to make any thief player with reasonable skill and no suicidal melee-til-death instincts unkillable, Anet has succeeded.

If the idea is to have a thief in a keep force 10+ enemy players to spend 15 minutes hunting him down using traps, sniffs and reveals... and MAYBE killing him (mostly if the thief messes up) or getting bored and letting him port his zerg back in, then Anet is doing a bang-up job.

 

[cyberzombie.7348]

9 hours ago, anduriell.6280 said:

damage while being able to be consistently invulnerable.

You do know that most DrD dodges has aftercast that makes a period of vulnerability? Like vault and bound after it reaches its apex.

[Caedmon.6798]

1 hour ago, Ged Kealmen.7210 said:

My humble opinion, after mostly solo roaming for 3800+ ranks and fighting countless thieves of all build variations and skill levels... stealth needs to be nerfed a bit. Not too much. Thief damage is fine, my issue is the lack of counters to stealth and the abuse of attacking from stealth and popping right back into stealth or just running away.

Either increase cooldowns on stealth generation just a bit, or cause forced reveal after attacks. A heavy first attack from stealth is fine, it makes sense, but constant stealth-attack-restealth-attack-restealth-attack ad infinitum is excessive.

If the idea is to make any thief player with reasonable skill and no suicidal melee-til-death instincts unkillable, Anet has succeeded.

If the idea is to have a thief in a keep force 10+ enemy players to spend 15 minutes hunting him down using traps, sniffs and reveals... and MAYBE killing him (mostly if the thief messes up) or getting bored and letting him port his zerg back in, then Anet is doing a bang-up job.

 

It baffles me that people want to see a solo spec nerfed but forever sustain groups are A OK.

I can counter them on my warri without slotting a reveal. Know why ? Cus i spend the time learning the spec and dueling them and learning how to counter. Yall want easy mode. Most people complain about a thief i reckon are running in groups only or simply have no clue on how to counter a thief.

Edited February 15, 2022 by Caedmon.6798

[Caedmon.6798]

1 hour ago, Ged Kealmen.7210 said:

My humble opinion, after mostly solo roaming for 3800+ ranks and fighting countless thieves of all build variations and skill levels... stealth needs to be nerfed a bit. Not too much. Thief damage is fine, my issue is the lack of counters to stealth and the abuse of attacking from stealth and popping right back into stealth or just running away.

Either increase cooldowns on stealth generation just a bit, or cause forced reveal after attacks. A heavy first attack from stealth is fine, it makes sense, but constant stealth-attack-restealth-attack-restealth-attack ad infinitum is excessive.

If the idea is to make any thief player with reasonable skill and no suicidal melee-til-death instincts unkillable, Anet has succeeded.

If the idea is to have a thief in a keep force 10+ enemy players to spend 15 minutes hunting him down using traps, sniffs and reveals... and MAYBE killing him (mostly if the thief messes up) or getting bored and letting him port his zerg back in, then Anet is doing a bang-up job.

 

 

Thats the same as saying you have a lack to condi removal while you could slot and trait it anyway.

Edited February 15, 2022 by Caedmon.6798

[Salt Mode.3780]

3 hours ago, Caedmon.6798 said:

It baffles me that people want to see a solo spec nerfed but forever sustain groups are A OK.

I can counter them on my warri without slotting a reveal. Know why ? Cus i spend the time learning the spec and dueling them and learning how to counter. Yall want easy mode. Most people complain about a thief i reckon are running in groups only or simply have no clue on how to counter a thief.

This statement can be said to alot of classes that got nerfed over the years your point? Mesmers getting gutted to the ground is the exact reason your post comes to play, but it doesnt mean that d/p SA isnt a problem. 

I have yet to see in WvW a thief using anything but d/p SA, does that show a problem...? Yes it does, it means that other thief builds have been nerfed throughout the years and needs to be looked upon and d/p SA needs to be toned down. People defending it are probably the people who is carried by this and refuses to see it get nerfed simple as that. 

Back in the days thieves were much more creative using sword dagger compared to something as braindead as d/p stealth reset spam.

[Caedmon.6798]

4 hours ago, Salt Mode.3780 said:

This statement can be said to alot of classes that got nerfed over the years your point? Mesmers getting gutted to the ground is the exact reason your post comes to play, but it doesnt mean that d/p SA isnt a problem. 

I have yet to see in WvW a thief using anything but d/p SA, does that show a problem...? Yes it does, it means that other thief builds have been nerfed throughout the years and needs to be looked upon and d/p SA needs to be toned down. People defending it are probably the people who is carried by this and refuses to see it get nerfed simple as that. 

Back in the days thieves were much more creative using sword dagger compared to something as braindead as d/p stealth reset spam.

You do realize you can do the same on D/P without Sa right,since forever ? You dont need SA to stack stealth and stay in it.

Edited February 16, 2022 by Caedmon.6798

[Salt Mode.3780]

2 hours ago, Caedmon.6798 said:

You do realize you can do the same on D/P without Sa right,since forever ? You dont need SA to stack stealth and stay in it.

Im pretty sure i said d/p with SA i didnt say d/p alone was super op i said the combo was

[anduriell.6280]

18 hours ago, TrollingDemigod.3041 said:

Funny, last time I checked Primordial Stance or Lava Skin don't have "evade" on their whole duration, must be something new added in last patch.
If you actually want to do some "comparision" for Ele, the closest you can get is: Burning Retreat, Fiery Whirl, Burning Speed, Earthen Rush and that's it.
You'll still end up with around 5k vs 17k, while Bounding Dodger can do something like 4k alone.

Can you just imagine the cries for  Smoke_Assault_(soulbeast) having the  multipliers from Vault ? Anet even nerfed the multipliers from 0.5 to 0.35 in the soulbeast skill because whining while Vault still sits in 1.85 . Vault because initiative can be cast up to 3 times in a row too. 

So from my point of view if Vault and similar skills are a defensive option like the mains here are defending the skill should sit in 0.35 multiplier. Or keep the multiplier but remove the evade altogether.  Thief simply has too many of those "bursting while being immune to damage"  skills inline with the stealth mechanic, which allows the class to be plagued by cheesy builds for low skill floor chaps. 

My point it is very toxic for a any PvP gamemode to have skills which are immunities while being burst skills. There is no counter play there, that is a PvE mechanic which has no place in PvP.   

This all drives to the same root mechanical problems as why Anet designed the gamemode to allow to reset the fights in mid-combat, stealth and evade uptimes for the thief and why there are so many PvE mechanics in a PVP gamemode. 

[Sahne.6950]

8 hours ago, Salt Mode.3780 said:

I have yet to see in WvW a thief using anything but d/p SA,

wait what?  A a big % of thiefs are Sword/Dagger daredevil   or even Core Sword/Dagger.... 

[Dawdler.8521]

29 minutes ago, Sahne.6950 said:

wait what?  A a big % of thiefs are Sword/Dagger daredevil   or even Core Sword/Dagger.... 

Cant thief use 2 weapon sets and 3 different traitlines? I dont quite see how your two examples exclude d/p SA.

[Sahne.6950]

1 hour ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Cant thief use 2 weapon sets and 3 different traitlines? I dont quite see how your two examples exclude d/p SA.

he said that you dont see a thief running ANYTHING other than d/p SA. didnt he?

just wanted to tell that there is infact other builds that you see on a regular.  from my exprience it is 50% d/p SA and the other 50% split between the other builds. DE; s/d daredevil; s/d core; p/d core

Edited February 16, 2022 by Sahne.6950

[Yellow Rainbow.6142]

Rifle DE with d/p offhand is giving me hard time for sure. Reveal doesn't work on it either. Any tips how to counter them?

Edited February 16, 2022 by Yellow Rainbow.6142

[Sahne.6950]

a good DE is pretty hard to catch 😕 reflects obviously work wonders against them. Other than that just going full ham works best for me. The best tip for anyone having problems with stealth is: keep in mind that you just cant see them! they are still there and you can still hit them.  Also their shots and especially the stealthattack make a very loud noise! use that to dodge their stealth attack!

Edited February 16, 2022 by Sahne.6950

[Salt Mode.3780]

3 hours ago, Sahne.6950 said:

he said that you dont see a thief running ANYTHING other than d/p SA. didnt he?

just wanted to tell that there is infact other builds that you see on a regular.  from my exprience it is 50% d/p SA and the other 50% split between the other builds. DE; s/d daredevil; s/d core; p/d core

Lol I dont know where you are playing but I RARELY see s/d thieves, there are more d/d memes then there are s/d.

Yes the most common thieves are d/p SA drd dash.

[Nitrosiili.5628]

One rework for stealth i would love to see.

If a person in stealth makes an attack and the opponent block/evades etc. The attacker gets revealed. Simple as that. 

 

Now if any class with stealth misses a stealth attack they can freely try again or try other skill. 

[Salt Mode.3780]

2 hours ago, Nitrosiili.5628 said:

One rework for stealth i would love to see.

If a person in stealth makes an attack and the opponent block/evades etc. The attacker gets revealed. Simple as that. 

 

Now if any class with stealth misses a stealth attack they can freely try again or try other skill. 

I had stated that already but its nice to see someone else agree to this. 

[Sobx.1758]

11 hours ago, anduriell.6280 said:

Can you just imagine the cries for  Smoke_Assault_(soulbeast) having the  multipliers from Vault ? Anet even nerfed the multipliers from 0.5 to 0.35 in the soulbeast skill because whining while Vault still sits in 1.85 . Vault because initiative can be cast up to 3 times in a row too. 

So from my point of view if Vault and similar skills are a defensive option like the mains here are defending the skill should sit in 0.35 multiplier. Or keep the multiplier but remove the evade altogether.  Thief simply has too many of those "bursting while being immune to damage"  skills inline with the stealth mechanic, which allows the class to be plagued by cheesy builds for low skill floor chaps. 

My point it is very toxic for a any PvP gamemode to have skills which are immunities while being burst skills. There is no counter play there, that is a PvE mechanic which has no place in PvP.   

This all drives to the same root mechanical problems as why Anet designed the gamemode to allow to reset the fights in mid-combat, stealth and evade uptimes for the thief and why there are so many PvE mechanics in a PVP gamemode. 

Smoke assault deals dmg WHILE evading for 1,5 seconds. Vault doesn't really deal damage while evading for 0,5s and still can be interrupted. Smoke assault covers the whole animation with evade, while dealing the damage with multi-hits and breaking the target. Vault covers 66% of the animation with evade. The mechanics of these skills are not the same, so if you want to discuss them, start with acknowledging the differences and go from there. 

Edited February 16, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[TrollingDemigod.3041]

17 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Smoke assault deals dmg WHILE evading for 1,5 seconds. Vault doesn't really deal damage while evading for 0,5s and still can be interrupted. Smoke assault covers the whole animation with evade, while dealing the damage with multi-hits and breaking the target. Vault covers 66% of the animation with evade. The mechanics of these skills are not the same, so if you want to discuss them, start with acknowledging the differences and go from there. 

Vault can be interrupted "reliably" by only like 11 skills in the entire game (some of which still will get you hit), rest is about "predicting" or "luck".
You may come with "hey, but it have smoll animation at the beginning of cast in which can be interrupted (beside the fact that you need to burn your eyes to actually notice it)", true, but then you also have cast times on your CCs, which makes it "lucky" to get it in time and interrupted, thus making it pretty much untouchable. Also true you can dodge it, but what if teef runs "Bounding Dodger"? That trait alone can deal around 4k damage alone, so you have to avoid 17k Vaults into 4k dodges, so it can go like: Vault, evade, Vault, evade, Vault, evade and port out, that's a lot of damage right there. If it somehow get's also some stacks of stab, then how you stop something like that? You don't.
Vault cast time is 0.75s, evade is 0.5s, you have opportunity window of 0.25s in theory, now add "lags", "ping", "bugs", "visual clutter" and even "FPS" into equation and you quite have a problem here. Some classes can spam CCs left and right and get some of them on teef, but was that truly skill of a player or just pure luck of spamming said skills?
The same problem here applies to Mirage in long run "offense and defense in one", it can pretty much be untouchable for most time in the fights and have very small opportunity windows to actually do something to them, but you must survive that long in the first place and be capable of biting them back, some classes don't have such luxury and have to pay something to have something.
We're moving away from main topic here, but if you look at the game balance objectively, there's a lot of broken stuff on all classes, some of that stuff even though is not abused currently, is still broken and should be looked into.
The question here is not "Is there anything else broken?" but "When that broken will show up?".

[cyberzombie.7348]

2 minutes ago, TrollingDemigod.3041 said:

Vault can be interrupted "reliably" by only like 11 skills in the entire game (some of which still will get you hit), rest is about "predicting" or "luck".

Not really, all you have to do is time your cc and pay attention to the apex. Since that's when the evasion frame end.

[Tseison.4659]

One dodge DD is looking real nice right about now...

[Nea.5936]

perma stealth itself is not so the problem but one of the worst decisions done by anet in wvw was to give the thief a portal in addition to perma stealth.

 

This seek and hide game in palace or bay or wherever is no fun, is just unfun by design because there is no proper counterplay. even if you call 50 people to seek for the thief can take an hour or so until the thief is dead finally.

 

is like so many things where a proper counterplay is missing where you just think "know what? kitten this keep, kitten this thief, kitten this game i go offline and do something else with my time"

[kash.9213]

1 hour ago, TrollingDemigod.3041 said:

Vault can be interrupted "reliably" by only like 11 skills in the entire game (some of which still will get you hit), rest is about "predicting" or "luck".
You may come with "hey, but it have smoll animation at the beginning of cast in which can be interrupted (beside the fact that you need to burn your eyes to actually notice it)", true, but then you also have cast times on your CCs, which makes it "lucky" to get it in time and interrupted, thus making it pretty much untouchable. Also true you can dodge it, but what if teef runs "Bounding Dodger"? That trait alone can deal around 4k damage alone, so you have to avoid 17k Vaults into 4k dodges, so it can go like: Vault, evade, Vault, evade, Vault, evade and port out, that's a lot of damage right there. If it somehow get's also some stacks of stab, then how you stop something like that? You don't.
Vault cast time is 0.75s, evade is 0.5s, you have opportunity window of 0.25s in theory, now add "lags", "ping", "bugs", "visual clutter" and even "FPS" into equation and you quite have a problem here. Some classes can spam CCs left and right and get some of them on teef, but was that truly skill of a player or just pure luck of spamming said skills?
The same problem here applies to Mirage in long run "offense and defense in one", it can pretty much be untouchable for most time in the fights and have very small opportunity windows to actually do something to them, but you must survive that long in the first place and be capable of biting them back, some classes don't have such luxury and have to pay something to have something.
We're moving away from main topic here, but if you look at the game balance objectively, there's a lot of broken stuff on all classes, some of that stuff even though is not abused currently, is still broken and should be looked into.
The question here is not "Is there anything else broken?" but "When that broken will show up?".

If they have Bounding Dodger then they don't have Dash. If they're rolling around on you within a window of time to potentially take you out, then one evade or port at the right time can gobble up a bunch of their Initiative and Endurance. Staff should gas out if they commit too deep so let them. 

Edited February 16, 2022 by kash.9213

[NorthernRedStar.3054]

 

2 hours ago, cyberzombie.7348 said:

Not really, all you have to do is time your cc and pay attention to the apex. Since that's when the evasion frame end.

The last ~0.5 seconds of Dagger Storm, despite its skill description, does not provide evade frames either. Unless the thief cancels early, it's almost painfully easy to time a burst skill or CC into that time window.

Same goes for condi DD, you root them once and they're kitten't.

Edited February 16, 2022 by NorthernRedStar.3054

[Sahne.6950]

18 hours ago, Salt Mode.3780 said:

Lol I dont know where you are playing but I RARELY see s/d thieves, there are more d/d memes then there are s/d.

Yes the most common thieves are d/p SA drd dash.

most common is d/p no doubt! but i see a ton of s/d thiefs these days! d/d is what i rarely see... and if i see one hes a freekill 😄 i just remember one d/d that i met on ebg like 2 months ago... but thats it.

[Keitaro Dragonheart.9047]

For all newcomers, allow me to summarize this thread for ya'll.

Ahem

"Nerf/Delete everything I don't like. How dare you make me put in effort, or, god forbid use my brain! *gasps in l2p*"

You're welcome.

Edited February 17, 2022 by Keitaro Dragonheart.9047