Stealth Rework Idea #1562

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

16 minutes ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

As for your question, I'm not going to entertain you about your dream of being super tanky while having glass canon level of damage. If elementalist or guardian can survive with what they are given, thief can certainly survive with what I've listed.

Hold on now, you misunderstand. Don't dodge* the question.

I asked if you could put any of those skills together in a viable build in a way that didn't include stealth. The players here seem to be convinced you can (or should be forced to).

I made no such implication that I wanted thieves to be super tanky while having glass cannon levels of damage. We can leave that to the guardians/eles. Like I said above:

Quote

I don't mind playing fair

My assertion is:

• Anet saw fit to give other classes with the same health pool multiple hard mitigation sources
• The current pool of skills available to thief cannot mitigate without stealth. 

There are a bunch of defensive skills available to thief, but their windows are so short and costs so large that it is not feasible to play stealthless. If you want thieves to play stealthless, you will need to adjust the defensives accordingly. 

If I'm wrong, prove it.

If I'm right, we need to start discussing what defensives get what before we start talking about axing stealth. 

Edited February 27 by Azure The Heartless.3261
*get it? dodge? Like thieves dodge. get it? Fine, whatever. Tough Crowd.

[Burial.1958]

7 minutes ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

Ah the good ol' "show me a video" argument... From experience with this kind of arguments, even if I were to provide you with one, you'd still deny facts. So, like I said, I answered to what I quoted, you'll have to live with this much.

Whoever claims things should also prove them. Otherwise it remains an assertion which you want to sell as facts. This works at most with those who already have a bias but with people who are knowledgeable, this does not work. Show me the video of how a D/P thief could do anything without stealth otherwise it's all just hot air without content.

[cyberzombie.7348]

2 hours ago, Yasai.3549 said:

My suggestion is to turn Revealed into a Player buff, and having Revealed will let you see invisible units in a 600 unit radius which will persist as long as the buff is on you. (of course this means the Buff wouldn't be called Revealed anymore, more like True Sight)

That on top of megabane tether would completely shut down thief. As if defense spellbreaker hasn't already. 

[cyberzombie.7348]

1 hour ago, Yunari.9065 said:

Thief is only good in Roaming WvW.

Even in that scenario, willlbender outclasses it since it has both mobility and in-combat defenses, with boons out the ar*e. 

[Yunari.9065]

3 minutes ago, cyberzombie.7348 said:

Even in that scenario, willlbender outclasses it since it has both mobility and in-combat defenses, with boons out the ar*e. 

 Pls don't tell them this. They will now go cry because thief is OP!! xD Even Soulbeast is better than thief but the casuals do not know this it seems. Soulbeast also hardcounters thief pretty hard and every decent soulbeast eats thief easily.  🤡 The Prob is that the skill lvls of the players have a huge cap. Only the bad ones still blame thief for everything.

[Yasai.3549]

1 hour ago, cyberzombie.7348 said:

That on top of megabane tether would completely shut down thief. As if defense spellbreaker hasn't already. 

You speak as if Thief doesn't have ways to easily port or escape a Magebane Tether. I've escaped Magebanes myself several times and even beaten cocky SpBs using non Stealth reliant Thief builds before, so your worries are unfounded. 

Also, you speak as if Stealth is the only way for Thief to play. News flash: Thief already has trouble in sPvP due to Area control builds, that's why people still play them as sidenoders which is still prevalent in the meta for the very same reason why they're so annoying to deal with: Mobility. 

your magebane complaint seems super skewed toward 1v1 dueling which sucks I guess, but you ARE playing a game with 9 different professions and 36 different "classes", of course there are things that are going to hard counter Thief. 

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

5 minutes ago, Yasai.3549 said:

You speak as if Thief doesn't have ways to easily port or escape a Magebane Tether. I've escaped Magebanes myself several times and even beaten cocky SpBs using non Stealth reliant Thief builds before, so your worries are unfounded. 

I am in agreement with this.

Spellbreakers are still warriors and retain the crippling allergy to blinds regardless of magebane tether. In this instance alone, you can likely run low/no stealth builds and still get away with a win if you're careful. 

The other classes are not balanced like warrior is, though. they have far more 

Quote

area control

across the board. 

 

Edited February 27 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[cyberzombie.7348]

@Yasai.3549As someone that fought against competent spellbreakers it's been stalemates. Even as a marauder sword thief it didn't matter whether I was surgical or agressive, mobility was litterally the only defense against them ever since they got resistance on dodge on top of tether.

And with everything in consideration the means to pressure them has been more of a gamble than a calculated risk. Making it a catch 22.

1 hour ago, Yasai.3549 said:

your magebane complaint seems super skewed toward 1v1 dueling which sucks I guess, but you ARE playing a game with 9 different professions and 36 different "classes", of course there are things that are going to hard counter Thief. 

Even then most classes already have the means to hard counter every playstyle. Just that most decide to not kit themselves for it, or didn't expect a certain type. So I still don't get the logic behind pushing for stronger counters. 

1 hour ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

Spellbreakers are still warriors and retain the crippling allergy to blinds regardless of magebane tether. In this instance alone, you can likely run low/no stealth builds and still get away with a win if you're careful. 

From personal experience this hasn't been the case since the defense rework. Hence why I specified 'defense spellbreaker.'

[ZeroTheRuler.7415]

20 hours ago, Yasai.3549 said:

I rather they did things which inversely helped fight stealth than rework stealth.

 

What I mean by this is to change Revealed into a 600 unit True Sight on a player as a non-interactable buff. Skills which previously applied Revealed to a target now buffs the caster so they can detect Stealthed enemies in this limited range around them. 

 

An attack from Stealth that previously apply Revealed to the player themselves now apply Revealed to the recipient of the Attack for a few seconds, so that back to back Stealth attacks are no longer effective.

But if the player in question is patient and skilled, they may choose to wait until the Revealed buff wears off and attack again. At least this gives the target some chance to fight back without directly touching the Stealth mechanic.

I remember a similar discussion from a while back when 'revealed' was being talked about. As a thief main I would prefer a something similar to that or even a variation of that. It is my opinion that if that or a variation of it was in place for all forms of stealth, trapper runes included, perhaps people might complain less. Also instead of gutting things it gives a different option, it might smoothen out the way stealth feels. Perhaps then some aspects of thief that have been held back might be buffed later.

I actually liked this version the most.

  

On 2/9/2023 at 7:02 AM, Dadnir.5038 said:

I'd go with a variation of option 1. The "true sight" from skills that reveal would be a self-buff and thief would automatically grant this buff to the attacked foe(s) upon landing a stealth attack on them. This "true sight" wouldn't prevent the thief from entering stealth but he wouldn't be totally invisible but would appear transparent and be untargetable while in stealth.

 

Edited February 28 by ZeroTheRuler.7415

[ZeroTheRuler.7415]

On 2/27/2023 at 12:31 AM, Dadnir.5038 said:

Core:

• Blind: Black powder, Blinding powder, smoke screen, shadow shot
• Evade skills: Death blossom, flanking strike, disabling shot, withdraw, roll for initiative, daggerstorm
• Projectile hate: Seal area, smoke screen
• Protection: cover of shadow (prot upon entering/exiting stealth
• Weakness: lotus poison (weakness upon poisoning a foe), crippling strike, signet of shadow
• Relatively high endurance regeneration: Endless stamina (50% increase in vigor effectiveness), signet of agility

Daredevil:

• 3rd dodge, Endurance thief (50 endurance on steal)
• Damage reduction mod: Marauder's resilience (-10% incoming damage), Weakening strike (-10% incoming damage + weakness on next strike after a dodge), Unhindered combatant (-10% incoming damage),
• Block: bandit defense,
• Evade: debilitating arc, vault,
• Blind: dust strike
• Weakness: weaknening charge

Deadeye:

• Damage reduction mod: Iron sight (-15%)
• Protection: Maleficient seven
• Blind: collateral damage, malicious tactical strike

Specter:

• Shroud: 33% damage reduction mod, Shielded health bar, barrier gain
• Barrier: Panaku's ambition

And I'm not even listing the self healing tools and stolen item. Mobility and stealth are far from being the only things a thief have to sustain themself. That said, thief isn't that great against condition damage.

100% I agree. Thief has many tools. If stealth were taken away or changed to what the OP suggested it would put thief in a really hard place in terms of what it can do though. The leader of my guild who has 40k achievement points was practicing dueling in our guild hall this week. He mentioned to me that he doesn't run thief because it simply doesn't have many answers to a lot of different situations.

While thief does have many tools, remember that it has the lowest HP class. Some other classes are getting just as mobile and are bruisers. Some of the tools that you mentioned like seal area have long cast or arm timers so they aren't exactly on the 'good choice' build lists. If they were 'good choices' then they would be used more frequently.

Every tool or build option needs to take damage into account. Running away from fights doesn't exactly win them and it doesn't make for a fun engaging experience. If stealth is removed or gutted like the OP then it will bend things even more in that direction. Sure there is strategic retreat and strategy in making your opponent run all around. While it might mean you escape, it might not mean anything actually useful is being done, but that's off topic. I prefer a much more aggressive style of stealth use and yes you didn't mention some other tools. To be clear I am just filtering things through the lens of what if stealth was changed like to what the OP mentioned. 

Also I had thought the 33% reduction on shroud was only in PvE?

Edited February 28 by ZeroTheRuler.7415

[ZeroTheRuler.7415]

On 2/26/2023 at 6:36 AM, Infinity.2876 said:

I hesitate to post this as I am absolutely certain someone will have a problem with this.

ever since deadeye have access to stealth on dodge, shadow meld, and ways to stack stealth from heartseeker into smoke field 3 times, stealth gankers have been prevalent in wvw and in some cases spvp. Now anet made sure to nerf stealth so enough that its better to be out of stealth than in it for multiple reasons. 

 

heart seeker 3x into a single field is a really cheesy way to get stealth and nerfing the amount of stealth you get from a single smoke field would be ok, but it doesn't address the real problem.

 

the real problem: stealth hides people from view and if the map is big enough you have no clue what soever where the thief is, he could be behind you, in front of you, or he could have left you entirely to pick on somebody else.

 

then I thought about it. In other games what makes you able to catch a thief? Noise.

 

Now we can't add footsteps to the game because it would be extremely difficult and funnel players into buying good headphones like those gammers in 1st person shooters. But we can add an approximate area. I suggest a circle appear randomly around the player, the thief could be at the bottom of the circle or top or anywhere in between. This circle would be bigger or smaller depending on skill that provided stealth. Exiting this circle would be a penalty of half of the thief's current stealth duration. If a skill is over preforming simply lower the radius of the circle

While your idea is creative, I do not agree with it. Also it is a narrow view of stealth. Also you do know if 3x heartseaker combos are performed, it's a few seconds before any other non auto attack skills can happen right? This is because it completely drains the initiative pool. Also if stealth is adjusted for thief I believe that stealth as a whole for all classes should behave the same. Didn't people go up in huge uproar after it was proposed that engi's stealth was going to be a aoe on the ground?

Edited February 28 by ZeroTheRuler.7415

[Yunari.9065]

16 hours ago, ZeroTheRuler.7415 said:

100% I agree. Thief has many tools. If stealth were taken away or changed to what the OP suggested it would put thief in a really hard place in terms of what it can do though. The leader of my guild who has 40k achievement points was practicing dueling in our guild hall this week. He mentioned to me that he doesn't run thief because it simply doesn't have many answers to a lot of different situations.

While thief does have many tools, remember that it has the lowest HP class. Some other classes are getting just as mobile and are bruisers. Some of the tools that you mentioned like seal area have long cast or arm timers so they aren't exactly on the 'good choice' build lists. If they were 'good choices' then they would be used more frequently.

Every tool or build option needs to take damage into account. Running away from fights doesn't exactly win them and it doesn't make for a fun engaging experience. If stealth is removed or gutted like the OP then it will bend things even more in that direction. Sure there is strategic retreat and strategy in making your opponent run all around. While it might mean you escape, it might not mean anything actually useful is being done, but that's off topic. I prefer a much more aggressive style of stealth use and yes you didn't mention some other tools. To be clear I am just filtering things through the lens of what if stealth was changed like to what the OP mentioned. 

Also I had thought the 33% reduction on shroud was only in PvE?

 

Such a list he made u could do that for any class. He posted that List like that every thief uses all of them. Haha Seal Area? Which thief runs that skill? Dust Strike? Coooomoonn. This guy doesn't have any clue about thief and only knows things from the wiki.

 

PS: Thief is the ONLY Class in the game which has a HARDCOUNTER as buyable Item which u can trow against them. Same also sentries and watchtowers because they can't do any kitten with reveal.

Thief is a good roaming class and a good 1vs1 but there are others which are also that good or even better. Outside of that thief is hilarious underrepresented in the whole game and one of the least played class.  Would it be that easy and op as some peoples claim.....there should be much more of them but that is not the case. 🥸

 

 

Edited March 1 by Yunari.9065

[ZeroTheRuler.7415]

47 minutes ago, Yunari.9065 said:

 

Such a list he made u could do that for any class. He posted that List like that every thief uses all of them. Haha Seal Area? Which thief runs that skill? Dust Strike? Coooomoonn. This guy doesn't have any clue about thief and only knows things from the wiki.

 

PS: Thief is the ONLY Class in the game which has a HARDCOUNTER as buyable Item which u can trow against them. Same also sentries and watchtowers because they can't do any kitten with reveal.

Thief is a good roaming class and a good 1vs1 but there are others which are also that good or even better. Outside of that thief is hilarious underrepresented in the whole game and one of the least played class.  Would it be that easy and op as some peoples claim.....there should be much more of them but that is not the case. 🥸

 

 

One thing I was emphasizing is that some of those tools aren't even practical enough to be in a 'good choice' build. The part I underlined is pretty similar to the idea that I was pointing out when using different builds.

The part I agreed with above is that I also think thief has a lot of tools.

I 100% agree with the part I underlined. That was really well said.

Edited March 1 by ZeroTheRuler.7415
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