Perma-stealth thieves hiding in keep vol 2

[Jugglemonkey.8741]

I hide in keeps whenever I get the chance as I enjoy hide and go stab. It's only better now with the portal, which by the way I have to give up a stunbreak for (hint hint, CC the thief). Honestly, if said keep has scouts and the enemy commander is aware, you're not getting far, and without a mesmer there's only 5 people on the inside. If you don't look after your stuff you deserve to lose it, regardless of how we got in.

[Strider Pj.2193]

@Fat Disgrace.4275 said:

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@Fat Disgrace.4275 said:

@"Warrior Xsr.1672" said:It's a bad joke trying to find and kill them. Near impossible. I have no idea what the Anet team was thinking. It's a punch in the gut to everyone in WvW. :s SMH!!!

People actually like to scout at 1 point and now it's more important then ever. With the tools available people still don't bother to use half and if that fails at least you can report the portal(s) which do have a visual tell tale.Report portals? Hahaha...

Last night I was on EB (first time in a month I think, who even plays there) and 5 reds captured the camp south of klovan. No one says anything. They expand to 7ish and stay at klovan, farming the 2-3 "defending" it... Over an entire tick. It wasnt until I had to say like "

Do people on the map not notice a tower thats been contested for the last 3+ minutes?!

" that 15+ instantly crawled out from their hiding places and easily took them out.

People dont see, people dont report.

And you want them to look for portals, lol.

Well then they lose kitten then don't they.

This^

Concise and to the point.

[bambi.6214]

@Turk.5460 said:

@Samug.6512 said:

@TenthLife.5724 said:Found one in our t3 keep, killed it. 2 mins later he/she/it was back inside now with an omega. Killed it again, next time it brought a load of friends so we lost the keep. Not really any good way to detect them as if they really want to your stealth uptime is nuts. Just saying.

The only clue there's a thief inside is occasional Deadeye audio line, and this game isn't designed to give audio clues so you can't even tell where is it coming from. It's ridiculous.

The only stealths that don't have a visual tell are Silent Scope (2s, bound to endurance), their heal (2-6s), and their Steal/Mark (3s, mark requires target in range). Granted that's a long stealth uptime for using all those skills, but these are not enough to keep up permastealth alone. Someone who is vigilantly hunting a perma stealthing Thief will be able to throw a target painter (gimungous radius) on the visual tells from smoke fields or stealth utilities. Once marked the Thief will be forced to leave the keep or die, as they'd have skills already on cooldown and little to no endurance for DE dodge stealths. DE can hide their Sniper's Cover smoke field in a wall, but even then it has a very audible queue that will direct you to the DE.

Once marked did they:A: Shortbow away? Congratulations, this is not a DE, and thus they need to use their incredibly visible stealth utilities or smoke fields much more often, making successfully using target painters effortless. Go have a duel and see if you were worthy of kicking them out of your keep.B: Shadowstep away as a DE after marked/revealed? This is pretty much their only gap making tool available, as they're most likely low on initiative, and can only DR twice in a row anyway, unless the

stars have aligned and you are hunting a Permastealth DE that is using Shadow Arts AND Trickery.

Can you not catch up to that? Then you're probably playing a necromancer and have no business trying to chase anyone anywhere.

C: thief uses Shadow Step to impossible to predict direction, targets you to teleport away from you three times using Rifle 4. Now that he's 2000-3000 units away, he gets OOC, drops the Portal, mounts up and safely runs away having 5000 range teleport that allows him even to run out of the keep.

I honestly can't believe people are defending this kind of game mechanics.

[Strider Pj.2193]

@Samug.6512 said:

@Turk.5460 said:

@Samug.6512 said:

@TenthLife.5724 said:Found one in our t3 keep, killed it. 2 mins later he/she/it was back inside now with an omega. Killed it again, next time it brought a load of friends so we lost the keep. Not really any good way to detect them as if they really want to your stealth uptime is nuts. Just saying.

The only clue there's a thief inside is occasional Deadeye audio line, and this game isn't designed to give audio clues so you can't even tell where is it coming from. It's ridiculous.

The only stealths that don't have a visual tell are Silent Scope (2s, bound to endurance), their heal (2-6s), and their Steal/Mark (3s, mark requires target in range). Granted that's a long stealth uptime for using all those skills, but these are not enough to keep up permastealth alone. Someone who is vigilantly hunting a perma stealthing Thief will be able to throw a target painter (gimungous radius) on the visual tells from smoke fields or stealth utilities. Once marked the Thief will be forced to leave the keep or die, as they'd have skills already on cooldown and little to no endurance for DE dodge stealths. DE can hide their Sniper's Cover smoke field in a wall, but even then it has a very audible queue that will direct you to the DE.

Once marked did they:A: Shortbow away? Congratulations, this is not a DE, and thus they need to use their incredibly visible stealth utilities or smoke fields much more often, making successfully using target painters effortless. Go have a duel and see if you were worthy of kicking them out of your keep.B: Shadowstep away as a DE after marked/revealed? This is pretty much their only gap making tool available, as they're most likely low on initiative, and can only DR twice in a row anyway, unless the

stars have aligned and you are hunting a Permastealth DE that is using Shadow Arts AND Trickery.

Can you not catch up to that? Then you're probably playing a necromancer and have no business trying to chase anyone anywhere.

C: thief uses Shadow Step to impossible to predict direction, targets you to teleport away from you three times using Rifle 4. Now that he's 2000-3000 units away, he gets OOC, drops the Portal, mounts up and safely runs away having 5000 range teleport that allows him even to run out of the keep.

I honestly can't believe people are defending this kind of game mechanics.

I know. I can’t believe he is allowed to mount up and gets three dodges and leaps along with 10k additional health.. dang..,

[Warrior Xsr.1672]

@Burnfall.9573 said:

@Ubi.4136 said:Sadly, it's completely broken. But Anet will never admit the mistake or fix it.

Anet is smart, intelligent and clearly knew its consequences and yet intentionally approved and allowed this Toxicity to pass

This Toxic change was intentional>> Nothing to admit>>Not A Mistake>>Nothing to fix>>No Apology Needed

That is an opinion. Not fact. I think they dropped the ball :/

[XenesisII.1540]

They defend it because they want to enjoy abusing it, same with the first round of ghost thieves, or the thieves that would cloak and dagger off walls all day long.Go ahead, enjoy your broken garbage while less and less players enjoy wvw every week and continue to quit because 7 years later stupid crap like this still manages to make it's way into the game.

[MedievalThings.5417]

@Fat Disgrace.4275 said:

@Warrior Xsr.1672 said:It's a bad joke trying to find and kill them. Near impossible. I have no idea what the Anet team was thinking. It's a punch in the gut to everyone in WvW. :s SMH!!!

People actually like to scout at 1 point and now it's more important then ever. With the tools available people still don't bother to use half and if that fails at least you can report the portal(s) which do have a visual tell tale.

The visual tell is only to players on YOUR team. The enemy does not see any portals. There is no indicator for the preparation, unlike mesmer portals.

[DemonSeed.3528]

If one thief can cause this much ruckus - that's a whole lotta ruckus!

[Vendetta.1958]

what do you guys reckon would be more annoying, minstrel permastealth thief in a keep or sentinels permastealth thief in a keep? asking for a friend

[bq pd.2148]

@Vendetta.1958 said:what do you guys reckon would be more annoying, minstrel permastealth thief in a keep or sentinels permastealth thief in a keep? asking for a friend

nomad if you just want to survive.tho if you know what you are doing id say valk is still better as the few situations in wich you might die will usually kill you regardless of equipment choice, but with valk you can still oneshot anyone while being rather tanky.

[Turk.5460]

@Samug.6512 said:C: thief uses Shadow Step to impossible to predict direction, targets you to teleport away from you three times using Rifle 4. Now that he's 2000-3000 units away, he gets OOC, drops the Portal, mounts up and safely runs away having 5000 range teleport that allows him even to run out of the keep.

I honestly can't believe people are defending this kind of game mechanics.

I already covered this in my post. Rifle4x3 = 15 Initiative. That's 3 more initiative than the Thief is going to have at maximum. The Thief is almost always not going to have the 12 max initiative to even do 2 DR's in a row after being marked.

 

This isn't even a problem in the game right now. People are creating a false narrative. If a Thief is in a keep, then he is no more difficult to kick out than a mesmer thanks to Mounts. Should mesmers lose their portal? No, it's been like that since the dawn of the game. I'll save some time and point out the incredibly obvious: here is how it's just as easy for a mesmer:

 

Blink, stealth, mount up, 3 mount evades. Gets dismounted? K cool, blink, stealth, mount up etc etc, place portal, leave keep, stealth, enter portal, blink, mount up, run around enemies. It's a part of the game, learn to adapt and you'll all be a little less stressed about things that don't matter.

Yikes! There are easier ways to concede one lost, btw. :3

[MedievalThings.5417]

@Turk.5460 said:

@Samug.6512 said:C: thief uses Shadow Step to impossible to predict direction, targets you to teleport away from you three times using Rifle 4. Now that he's 2000-3000 units away, he gets OOC, drops the Portal, mounts up and safely runs away having 5000 range teleport that allows him even to run out of the keep.

I honestly can't believe people are defending this kind of game mechanics.

I already covered this in my post. Rifle4x3 = 15 Initiative. That's 3 more initiative than the Thief is going to have

at maximum.

The Thief is almost always

not

going to have the 12 max initiative to even do 2 DR's in a row after being marked.

 

This isn't even a problem in the game right now. People are creating a false narrative. If a Thief is in a keep, then he is no more difficult to kick out than a mesmer thanks to Mounts. Should mesmers lose their portal? No, it's been like that since the dawn of the game. I'll save some time and point out the incredibly obvious: here is how it's just as easy for a mesmer:

 

Blink, stealth, mount up, 3 mount evades. Gets dismounted? K cool, blink, stealth, mount up etc etc, place portal, leave keep, stealth, enter portal, blink, mount up, run around enemies. It's a part of the game, learn to adapt and you'll all be a little less stressed about things that don't matter.

Yikes! There are easier ways to concede one lost, btw. :3

I agree that the thief portal should be just like the mesmer portal, with regards to it's timer and huge, visible tell to enemies.BUT, right now that isn't the case. The available window to port back in is 1 minute (instead of the 30 seconds on mesmer) and there is NO visual indicator (except to players on your own team). So, until they change those 2 things, it is not just as easy to kick a thief out as it is a mesmer. There are also no perma-stealth mesmer builds (not without friends to help) and mesmer cannot remove reveal. Mesmer drops a portal, jumps out, gets mob jumped on return, the game even has a huge indicator (and short use window) when the portal becomes active. I would agree that those things need to be added to the wvw version of the thief portal. It needs to be visible to enemies, and it needs to light up/flash when it has been activated so that enemy players can see it is active...just like mesmer. Those things need to happen at a minimum, or they need to reduce the number of players who can use it in wvw to 1.

[bq pd.2148]

@Ubi.4136 said:It needs to be visible to enemies, and it needs to light up/flash when it has been activated so that enemy players can see it is active...just like mesmer. Those things need to happen at a minimum, or they need to reduce the number of players who can use it in wvw to 1.

visible portal only does help if you have a large group ready to bomb the portal, else it wont change much and reducing it to 1, how should that change anything? i mean you still can use it for yourself or let a mesmer port through to get in a zerg. the only consequence would be for small groups that they also need a mesmer.

[MedievalThings.5417]

The visual indicator and tell on use helps prevent abuse. Reducing the portal to self-use only in wvw, would also help curtail that, but only needed if Anet doesn't want it to have the indicators that the mesmer portal has. They have consistently added a broken mechanic, and then patched it to prevent the abuses from it (like thieves hiding and dagger 5 the wall to stay invisible for example). This needs to be fixed, and not at the rate they are fixing the problems from PoF.

[bq pd.2148]

even with only selfuse you will still have people complaining that the thief solo flipped the keep, been there already and the portal even with only selfuse enables flipping camps from inside a keep, getting supply to open inner and solo the lord, did exactly that to a t3 keep today.

[MedievalThings.5417]

@MUDse.7623 said:even with only selfuse you will still have people complaining that the thief solo flipped the keep, been there already and the portal even with only selfuse enables flipping camps from inside a keep, getting supply to open inner and solo the lord, did exactly that to a t3 keep today.

Which is why they need to reduce the timer to 30 seconds, just like the mesmer portal and add a visible indicator and tell on use. So there is decent counterplay and less abuse of broken mechanics.

[bq pd.2148]

@Ubi.4136 said:

@MUDse.7623 said:even with only selfuse you will still have people complaining that the thief solo flipped the keep, been there already and the portal even with only selfuse enables flipping camps from inside a keep, getting supply to open inner and solo the lord, did exactly that to a t3 keep today.

Which is why they need to reduce the timer to 30 seconds, just like the mesmer portal and add a visible indicator and tell on use. So there is decent counterplay and less abuse of broken mechanics.

basically make the skill useless in WvW and mostly for PvE use?

[MedievalThings.5417]

Mesmer portal isn't useless anywhere, and it has a 30 sec cd in wvw now, and a giant tell on both the entrance and when the exit is placed.Giving a class perma-stealth, a counter to reveal (multiple uses), AND a portal is a bad idea. BUT, giving them a portal with a 5k range, 1 min cd and no indicators at all is just broken. There is NO counterplay. The portal can be placed anywhere and it cannot be seen. There is nothing to ever show if the thief has a portal down (unlike the mesmer portal). Meaning the thief can jump in and out all day without ever being caught.

This is pretty much the perfect example of a broken mechanic.

[bq pd.2148]

the differences between the portals has nothing to do with wether the thief can be caught or not. if you make the thief portal in WvW equal to the mesmer one in each aspect, it would probably be even better in most cases than the current one as a limit of 5 uses can be rather low if you want to get a zerg in.

i think overall you focus too much on the portal and especially its lack of tells, if you truly have an issue with thieves in keeps.

a thief can solo flip the lords and you can give the thief siege to open inner wall/gate if he is stuck in outer. getting people inside might speed some things up, but if you truly have issue with the fact that you cant 'catch' the thief to eliminate the threat, then even deleting the portal doesnt 'fix' your issue.

[enkidu.5937]

@MUDse.7623 said:the differences between the portals has nothing to do with wether the thief can be caught or not

How do you catch a thief that is outside of the keep (but his portal exit inside the lordroom)?

Thief places the exit in the lordroom and jumps out of the keep: the cooldown of the skill is already ticking, though the portal is not being used yet-> waits 60 seconds-> ports back to the lord room, the portal CD is off, immediately places a new exit-> jumps out of the keep-> waits 60 seconds-> ports back etc.

@Ubi.4136 said:Which is why they need to reduce the timer to 30 seconds, just like the mesmer portal and add a visible indicator and tell on use. So there is decent counterplay and less abuse of broken mechanics.Or the CD of the portal exit should start to tick down only after the entry is placed and used (not just after the exit is placed). Imo that would better fit the nature of this skill (preparation, kind of a trap, stealth appication), and distinguish it from the mesmer.

PS: just for general clarification: the CD of the skill is 60 secs after the exit is placed, and the duration of the exit is also 60 secs (the time the theef has to place the entry and use the portal)

[Justine.6351]

"Anet remove gates so servers stop hiding inside objectives with dozens of arrow carts"

"Anet give us siege ladders or ways of sending a single player over walls to cause havok"

Well there you go. But yeah, it's the wvw forum...

[bq pd.2148]

@enkidu.5937 said:

@MUDse.7623 said:the differences between the portals has nothing to do with wether the thief can be caught or not

How do you catch a thief that is outside of the keep (but his portal exit inside the lordroom)?

Thief places the exit in the lordroom and jumps out of the keep: the cooldown of the skill is already ticking, though the portal is not being used yet-> waits 60 seconds-> ports back to the lord room, the portal CD is off, immediately places a new exit-> jumps out of the keep-> waits 60 seconds-> ports back etc.

if you have enough people that are good enough to hunt the thief inside the lordroom, they most certainly will also catch you doing that as your movement is even more predictable so you can be easier marked and put in combat. if they dont put a thought in how to get the thief, then even a huge zerg will fail anyway.i have been doing this far longer than we have portals, the portal just gets a zerg in incase the thief is inpatient, everything else the thief could already do.

[DoomNexus.5324]

Perma stealthing thieves porting mates/mesmers into a keep/tower is actually the only reason why I was hyped for the new portal in the first place.Don't really see another use for it or something you can't do as mesmer too.I mean.. did really nobody think about that when it got announced or why all the whining just now?

[enkidu.5937]

@MUDse.7623 said:

@enkidu.5937 said:

@MUDse.7623 said:the differences between the portals has nothing to do with wether the thief can be caught or not

How do you catch a thief that is outside of the keep (but his portal exit inside the lordroom)?

Thief places the exit in the lordroom and jumps out of the keep: the cooldown of the skill is already ticking, though the portal is not being used yet-> waits 60 seconds-> ports back to the lord room, the portal CD is off, immediately places a new exit-> jumps out of the keep-> waits 60 seconds-> ports back etc.

if you have enough people that are good enough to hunt the thief inside the lordroom, they most certainly will also catch you doing that as your movement is even more predictable so you can be easier marked and put in combat. if they dont put a thought in how to get the thief, then even a huge zerg will fail anyway.i have been doing this far longer than we have portals, the portal just gets a zerg in incase the thief is inpatient, everything else the thief could already do.

Did you even read my post? Lets take the keeps on EBG, with a single wall separating the lord room from the outside of the keep. What exactly is predictable when a perma stealth thief jumps in and out at will through an invisible portal?

[bq pd.2148]

@enkidu.5937 said:

@MUDse.7623 said:

@enkidu.5937 said:

@MUDse.7623 said:the differences between the portals has nothing to do with wether the thief can be caught or not

How do you catch a thief that is outside of the keep (but his portal exit inside the lordroom)?

Thief places the exit in the lordroom and jumps out of the keep: the cooldown of the skill is already ticking, though the portal is not being used yet-> waits 60 seconds-> ports back to the lord room, the portal CD is off, immediately places a new exit-> jumps out of the keep-> waits 60 seconds-> ports back etc.

if you have enough people that are good enough to hunt the thief inside the lordroom, they most certainly will also catch you doing that as your movement is even more predictable so you can be easier marked and put in combat. if they dont put a thought in how to get the thief, then even a huge zerg will fail anyway.i have been doing this far longer than we have portals, the portal just gets a zerg in incase the thief is inpatient, everything else the thief could already do.

Did you even read my post? Lets take the keeps on EBG, with a single wall separating the lord room from the outside of the keep. What exactly is predictable when a perma stealth thief jumps in and out at will through an invisible portal?

yes i did read your post, thank you for questioning my intelligence.ebg keep might be the only one were it does matter, but only after the portal is fixed. right now with that buggy thing you dont want to jump out too often.if just 1 or 2 clueless are searching for you, it doesnt matter wether you have a portal or not. thats why i started with:

if you have enough people that are good enough to hunt the thief inside the lordroomthat would mean that most of the keep is trapped, plenty of people around to pin you down once you show your tail and trying to track audio/visual tells.in such a case you will want to walk as little as possible. in most keeps were you would need to walk from inner to the outer quite a bit it will be difficult to prestack enough stealth that you can port back and run out again without any audio/visual tell and then you still need to hope they didnt trap the place while when you just stay inside and move little, then you atleast can keep track of your surroudings wich you wont do around the portal. IMO spamming portal on cd would not be the best way to utilize it. i would use it as a safety tool. meaning in case i get into a trap i will walk a bit or shadow step, place the portal and mount up, trigger as much as i can, might even jump out and go back again with now a much larger safezone.