Thief invisible...

[TrollingDemigod.3041]

6 hours ago, kidbuu.4071 said:

Here's the secret, well it's not really secret. We're either coming towards you or away from you during an altercation know your environment ( because that's what thieves do we know our environment!) 

It's funny how you wrote wall of text to hide this gem clearly stating that fighting against teef is nothing more than a guessing game.

[Birdie.3869]

4 hours ago, Invictorum.7643 said:

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?

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.

 

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.
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.

But does it really matter what I think? My original post was mainly pointing out what can be done currently to stealthed targets. I just threw my two cents in at the end. We all know Anet is never going to make any real changes to invisibility.

[ZeroTheRuler.7415]

On 11/25/2023 at 3:52 PM, 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.

 

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.
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.

But does it really matter what I think? My original post was mainly pointing out what can be done currently to stealthed targets. I just threw my two cents in at the end. We all know Anet is never going to make any real changes to invisibility.

Yeah, it doesn't matter what we think. Previously I tried to suggest to people on how to deal with stealth.

I don't know how they will balance the acro line. If they were to make thief dependent on another trait line just to survive that would make options even more restrictive for competitive modes. Already I don't like thieves dependence on the shadow arts and or trickery line. Honestly I like running Daredevil builds without shadow arts.

IMO, I think a different type of solution would be better. Like the one suggested in this thread. The comment I have linked here hits the nail on the head for the issue in my eyes.

Changing targeted "revealed" skills to be a active self buff would be a much more elegant solution than what is there right now. It would feel a lot more active vs reactive and fair.

1. Targeted revealed skills would turn into a self buffs that allow you to do a a small tell in the form of a "soft detect" or "true sight" for the duration of the skill. Targeting would be disabled, but the goal would be to give hints to where the invisible character might be (stealth is not exclusive to thief). I also think there should be a limited range on this true sight. It would not reveal anything on the map either. Also if a sheathed character walked in range where this skill was active there would also need to be a tell for stealth users. Perhaps this could be a trait or perhaps it could be baked in for stealth users.
2. Targets that are attacked where stealth was broken would gain the same "soft detect" for a few seconds
3. A revealed debuff on exiting stealth via a attack would remain
4. Skills or traits or damage numbers for stealth users would most likely need to be balanced after this in order to compensate

Edited November 27, 2023 by ZeroTheRuler.7415

[kidbuu.4071]

6 hours ago, TrollingDemigod.3041 said:

It's funny how you wrote wall of text to hide this gem clearly stating that fighting against teef is nothing more than a guessing game.

If this is your perceived insight towards how to play a game mode versus the skill combatant and yes, I could see that being your point. But I think you may be shortsighted to the overall concept of world versus world opposed to PVP.

 

[Invictorum.7643]

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.

[TrollingDemigod.3041]

4 hours ago, kidbuu.4071 said:

If this is your perceived insight towards how to play a game mode versus the skill combatant and yes, I could see that being your point. But I think you may be shortsighted to the overall concept of world versus world opposed to PVP.

 

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.

[Invictorum.7643]

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.

[TrollingDemigod.3041]

3 hours ago, Invictorum.7643 said:

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.

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...

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

8 hours 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.

while were on the topic of nerfing thief...lets nerf hammer SB with magebane tether. can knocklock you for days

[Invictorum.7643]

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.

[kidbuu.4071]

On 11/26/2023 at 11:12 AM, Invictorum.7643 said:

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.

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.

[Invictorum.7643]

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.

>_>

Edited November 28, 2023 by Invictorum.7643
Added reasoning

[kidbuu.4071]

2 hours ago, Invictorum.7643 said:

Wrong person to quote, buu

I'm saying that the complaint

Sorry about that Invictorum.7643, that was meant for trolldemigod. 

[oatsnjuices.1698]

Just remove blind from black powder. stealth would not be so oppressive if perma stealth did not include perma blind. Its almost as oppressive as the almost perma reflect warrior gets from almost perma aegis and perma stability while using bladesworn. dragon slash healing and huge endurance gain from might makes right trait are enough. 

Edited November 29, 2023 by oatsnjuices.1698