Perma Stealth + Portal is an issue I'd like to address.

[Rikit Runk.5170]

Hi there, on my world it's quite common to have a perma-stealth thief camping in your Keep, waiting to port some others in.And when said Thief is somewhat decent,it's almost impossible to remove him from your keep even when you hunt him with multiple people.

To address this problem without nerving the thief to the ground I suggest a new mechanic that gets applied to you, when you're within an enemy Keep.This could be visualized with something similar to a breakbar.The Bar starts at it maxiumum value of 300 (seconds_allowed_in_stealth 10)each second in stealth deals 15 (10 + [Heal / second]) points of damage to it.But each second the Bar gets healed for 5(Seconds_allowed_in_stealth 10 / Time_Frame) PointsWhenever the Bar drops to zero you get revealed.

so you can either spend your full 30 seconds in stealth and burn your bar to zero and have only little access to stealth for the next seconds or you only briefly stealth every now and then but you'll be able to maintain your stealth-bar for extended periods of time.By doing so the thief can still use stealth to gain access to his strong stealth attacks and stealth related traits, but he'll have a harder time to reset the fight completely and hide in some corner. Giving his opponents a fighting chance.

I believe this is a somewhat fair solution for all sides. It's not impossible to hide in keeps, but you have to put alot of work in, if you've been discovered to stay there.Opposed to the current situation where the thief needs to fuck up is rotation before he can get punished for it.

[saerni.2584]

@Rikit Runk.5170 said:Hi there, on my world it's quite common to have a perma-stealth thief camping in your Keep, waiting to port some others in.And when said Thief is somewhat decent,it's almost impossible to remove him from your keep even when you hunt him with multiple people.

To address this problem without nerving the thief to the ground I suggest a new mechanic that gets applied to you, when you're within an enemy Keep.This could be visualized with something similar to a breakbar.The Bar starts at it maxiumum value of 300 (seconds_allowed_in_stealth 10)each second in stealth deals 15 (10 + [Heal / second]) points of damage to it.But each second the Bar gets healed for 5(Seconds_allowed_in_stealth 10 / Time_Frame) PointsWhenever the Bar drops to zero you get revealed.

so you can either spend your full 30 seconds in stealth and burn your bar to zero and have only little access to stealth for the next seconds or you only briefly stealth every now and then but you'll be able to maintain your stealth-bar for extended periods of time.By doing so the thief can still use stealth to gain access to his strong stealth attacks and stealth related traits, but he'll have a harder time to reset the fight completely and hide in some corner. Giving his opponents a fighting chance.

I believe this is a somewhat fair solution for all sides. It's not impossible to hide in keeps, but you have to put alot of work in, if you've been discovered to stay there.Opposed to the current situation where the thief needs to kitten up is rotation before he can get punished for it.

What server matchup is that? I never see anything like this.

[kash.9213]

@Rikit Runk.5170 said:Hi there, on my world it's quite common to have a perma-stealth thief camping in your Keep, waiting to port some others in.And when said Thief is somewhat decent,it's almost impossible to remove him from your keep even when you hunt him with multiple people.

To address this problem without nerving the thief to the ground I suggest a new mechanic that gets applied to you, when you're within an enemy Keep.This could be visualized with something similar to a breakbar.The Bar starts at it maxiumum value of 300 (seconds_allowed_in_stealth 10)each second in stealth deals 15 (10 + [Heal / second]) points of damage to it.But each second the Bar gets healed for 5(Seconds_allowed_in_stealth 10 / Time_Frame) PointsWhenever the Bar drops to zero you get revealed.

so you can either spend your full 30 seconds in stealth and burn your bar to zero and have only little access to stealth for the next seconds or you only briefly stealth every now and then but you'll be able to maintain your stealth-bar for extended periods of time.By doing so the thief can still use stealth to gain access to his strong stealth attacks and stealth related traits, but he'll have a harder time to reset the fight completely and hide in some corner. Giving his opponents a fighting chance.

I believe this is a somewhat fair solution for all sides. It's not impossible to hide in keeps, but you have to put alot of work in, if you've been discovered to stay there.Opposed to the current situation where the thief needs to kitten up is rotation before he can get punished for it.

If your map presence can't bother to sweep once the keep is re-taken then you don't need to waste your time. It's not almost impossible to remove that thief, bothering to do something and not being able to are different things.

At what point does your new stealth bar activate? I don't know if I'm understanding correctly about that bars duration and stipulations but regardless, I don't think I want that bar ticking away over my head as I arrive to a keep siege. Any more details you can give or make it more clear visually what's going on with it?

[Sugar Min.5834]

This is never an issue if every one makes an effort to sweep the Keeps. Apparently these days players (the Commanders included) are so anxious to get to the next objective or go looking for another fight that they don't care about sweeping and clearing whatever the enemies left behind. I used to hear Commanders reminding all to sweep for thieves or mesmers and to clear enemy sieges but not anymore these days. Many times, I found and cleared enemies sieges outside the walls, near and far.

Many players complained and suggested changes in the forum when they cannot deal or cope with a situation. After so many years, do they not realised that any changes made may not necessarily solved the problems but created more problems in the future? This why we are in the current noodle state now when players had been calling for nerfs to every professions they have problem with. Well done guys!

[DemonSeed.3528]

I think it's important we start giving handicaps to everything in this game because the quality of skills and effort have gone down considerably.

Just kidding of course. Come on guys, you either put effort into getting the leftovers in keep whether it's players or siege, or just leave them be. There are ways to beat them. If your Zerg is ppt/ktrain then it's their fault for not bothering or responding to callout. Even those other people not in squad that are on map. I've been on servers like this. It's on the impetus of the players to take responsibility and effort. Mostly I see people give up because they don't know how to approach the problem or some just don't care. I consider this not even a problem when you compare it to other things, like how about servers with a low population fighting against stacked servers with coverage? How you fight against that? Should the outnumbered server start getting radar for map that showed every position of all enemies on map? It would be fair for all, no? Of course they shouldn't, but it is a bigger problem than thieves hiding in keeps.

[Caedmon.6798]

You have stealth traps available,use them. You run with a blob,meaning 50 people could lay down one..Instead of asking for nerfs,use the tools you have available instead.

[Faenar.8036]

If a zerg dont sweep all enemies from an objective, its just a karma-train zerg who actually does not care anymore about that objective instantly at the moment of capturing it. No Thief can survive (or at least stay inside the objective) if a zerg take its full effort of sweeping that Thief out.

Anyway, no nerfs needed for Thief, at least not for this reason. Well, adding a Mesmer portal skill to Thief class is another story ...

[Rikit Runk.5170]

@kash.9213 said:

@Rikit Runk.5170 said:Hi there, on my world it's quite common to have a perma-stealth thief camping in your Keep, waiting to port some others in.And when said Thief is somewhat decent,it's almost impossible to remove him from your keep even when you hunt him with multiple people.

To address this problem without nerving the thief to the ground I suggest a new mechanic that gets applied to you, when you're within an enemy Keep.This could be visualized with something similar to a breakbar.The Bar starts at it maxiumum value of 300 (seconds_allowed_in_stealth

10)each second in stealth deals 15 (10 + [Heal / second]) points of damage to it.But each second the Bar gets healed for 5(Seconds_allowed_in_stealth

10 / Time_Frame) PointsWhenever the Bar drops to zero you get revealed.

so you can either spend your full 30 seconds in stealth and burn your bar to zero and have only little access to stealth for the next seconds or you only briefly stealth every now and then but you'll be able to maintain your stealth-bar for extended periods of time.By doing so the thief can still use stealth to gain access to his strong stealth attacks and stealth related traits, but he'll have a harder time to reset the fight completely and hide in some corner. Giving his opponents a fighting chance.

I believe this is a somewhat fair solution for all sides. It's not impossible to hide in keeps, but you have to put alot of work in, if you've been discovered to stay there.Opposed to the current situation where the thief needs to kitten up is rotation before he can get punished for it.

If your map presence can't bother to sweep once the keep is re-taken then you don't need to waste your time. It's not almost impossible to remove that thief, bothering to do something and not being able to are different things.

At what point does your new stealth bar activate? I don't know if I'm understanding correctly about that bars duration and stipulations but regardless, I don't think I want that bar ticking away over my head as I arrive to a keep siege. Any more details you can give or make it more clear visually what's going on with it?

The Situation that made me create this Thread was the following: A small (~15) enemy group attacked the fire keep on the Desert Borderlamd, but got defeated while fighting the Lord. A single thief stayed behind hiding in the Lord-room. 10 of us tried to catch him for 10 Min at that point most of us gave up as the thief was quite evasive and tanky , using a bunch of teleports to run around in circles.To simply spam reveal traps wasn't an option either as we needed the mats to repair the walls.

the Stealthbar activates once you enter the area guarded by walls.The bar won't tick down unless you're in stealth.It will regenerate when ever you're out of stealth. making it from zero to full in 60 seconds.When you're stealthed it will tick down with each second. reaching zero after 30 seconds.So you can choose to have one big stealth time or several smaller ones.but over a time frame of one minute you can only maintain a stealth uptime of 50%Of course these Numbers are not set in stone. And the Balance Team will propaly and hopefully tweak them. This is more about the concept.

[pninak.1069]

use target painter traps. if you get him with one he is pretty much dead. and even if you don't get him you punish the next zerg capturing the keep by draining supplies.

[kash.9213]

@Rikit Runk.5170 said:

@kash.9213 said:

@Rikit Runk.5170 said:Hi there, on my world it's quite common to have a perma-stealth thief camping in your Keep, waiting to port some others in.And when said Thief is somewhat decent,it's almost impossible to remove him from your keep even when you hunt him with multiple people.

To address this problem without nerving the thief to the ground I suggest a new mechanic that gets applied to you, when you're within an enemy Keep.This could be visualized with something similar to a breakbar.The Bar starts at it maxiumum value of 300 (seconds_allowed_in_stealth

10)each second in stealth deals 15 (10 + [Heal / second]) points of damage to it.But each second the Bar gets healed for 5(Seconds_allowed_in_stealth

10 / Time_Frame) PointsWhenever the Bar drops to zero you get revealed.

so you can either spend your full 30 seconds in stealth and burn your bar to zero and have only little access to stealth for the next seconds or you only briefly stealth every now and then but you'll be able to maintain your stealth-bar for extended periods of time.By doing so the thief can still use stealth to gain access to his strong stealth attacks and stealth related traits, but he'll have a harder time to reset the fight completely and hide in some corner. Giving his opponents a fighting chance.

I believe this is a somewhat fair solution for all sides. It's not impossible to hide in keeps, but you have to put alot of work in, if you've been discovered to stay there.Opposed to the current situation where the thief needs to kitten up is rotation before he can get punished for it.

If your map presence can't bother to sweep once the keep is re-taken then you don't need to waste your time. It's not almost impossible to remove that thief, bothering to do something and not being able to are different things.

At what point does your new stealth bar activate? I don't know if I'm understanding correctly about that bars duration and stipulations but regardless, I don't think I want that bar ticking away over my head as I arrive to a keep siege. Any more details you can give or make it more clear visually what's going on with it?

The Situation that made me create this Thread was the following: A small (~15) enemy group attacked the fire keep on the Desert Borderlamd, but got defeated while fighting the Lord. A single thief stayed behind hiding in the Lord-room. 10 of us tried to catch him for 10 Min at that point most of us gave up as the thief was quite evasive and tanky , using a bunch of teleports to run around in circles.To simply spam reveal traps wasn't an option either as we needed the mats to repair the walls.

the Stealthbar activates once you enter the area guarded by walls.The bar won't tick down unless you're in stealth.It will regenerate when ever you're out of stealth. making it from zero to full in 60 seconds.When you're stealthed it will tick down with each second. reaching zero after 30 seconds.So you can choose to have one big stealth time or several smaller ones.but over a time frame of one minute you can only maintain a stealth uptime of 50%Of course these Numbers are not set in stone. And the Balance Team will propaly and hopefully tweak them. This is more about the concept.

10 minutes is a long time with no response from any map and a long time for none of your 10 to land a pull or anything. That's frustrating but it sounds like your Fire keep wasn't going to last long regardless. I think attacking a Lord or Champ should mark you for quite awhile after but what you're suggesting would be annoying if I'm just showing up to siege a keep, many of which last a long time.

[schokelmei.8271]

Great idea. Because a combination of two skills is ridiculous overpowered we need to "counter it" with 25 people wasting 250 supplies all over a keep.You hear yourself talking sometimes?How about we give guardians a break bar that needs to be hit by 15 people before you can damage a guardian? Or how about we make warclaw 500% faster and put a trap into the game that slows it by 10% when the war claw hits it?

Thieves these days. really.

[kash.9213]

@"gebrechen.5643" said:Great idea. Because a combination of two skills is ridiculous overpowered we need to "counter it" with 25 people wasting 250 supplies all over a keep.You hear yourself talking sometimes?How about we give guardians a break bar that needs to be hit by 15 people before you can damage a guardian? Or how about we make warclaw 500% faster and put a trap into the game that slows it by 10% when the war claw hits it?

Thieves these days. really.

I never see anyone wasting supply after a keep take. Usually a pull or two does it. Lazy people these days. Really.

[schokelmei.8271]

That doesn't change the issue with the skills, does it? The counterplay is "bring a zerg that does". That's the point and that has to be changed.

[SlitheSlivier.1908]

You know that when a keep is taken, it marks everyone for 5 minutes. This means there is no such thing as permastealth in there. Also warriors have just as much mobility but don't lose their resources (initiative) when running so they can catch thieves and hurt them. You don't need reveal traps. You just have to understand how they work. Split into 2 groups. When the thief teleports, one group sits on that spot while the other chases.

Just do a sweep as usual and you are good.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

allowing porting into keeps is idiotic as it completely bypasses the entire point of wvw. no need to fiddle with stealth as that doesn't fix the actual problem.

[borgs.6103]

When scores matter again to most WvW players, be it from rewards, a rework of the system or tournaments, this won't be as much of an issue and will be more of a mild annoyance because the community itself will be vigilant in catching these types of shenanigans.

[melody.2601]

Perma Stealth and Portal are no Issues.Stop trying to find problems where there none.

[subversiontwo.7501]

@melody.2601 said:Perma Stealth and Portal are no Issues.Stop trying to find problems where there none.Nothing to see here kids, my class is fine.

[Mokk.2397]

@pninak.1069 said:use target painter traps. if you get him with one he is pretty much dead. and even if you don't get him you punish the next zerg capturing the keep by draining supplies.

Target painters? A Band Aid to fix a severed leg. Why should it be necessary to have to use a gimmick outside of existing reveals to deal with one class. NO OTHER CLASS REQUIRES THE PURCHASE OF SPECIAL EQUIPMENT FIGHT IT!!! The excessive stealth is servery busted so FIX IT !

[Shiyo.3578]

Thief main here. Perma stealth is a global game issue, and not just a WvW one.

The original design of stealth(or so I thought), and why it's usable in combat unlike other MMO's, is because you were only supposed to have limited amounts of stealth and never perma stealth. However, now after shadow art traitline buffs(why? no one wants to fight SA thieves) and some other changes over the past 5+ years stealth has gotten too easy and spammable on thief. You now can just perma stealth all over the place.

At this point, this game has the most overpowered stealth I've ever seen in the MMORPG genre. In most games, stealth can only be used out of combat(or on a long cooldown mid-combat), being hit removes you from stealth, and you can see the stealthed player if you get near them but has no duratio. GW2 however, does not have any of these disadvantages, and has advantages on top of having no disadvantages. It's absurd.

At this point, we might as well just have all the restrictions that most MMORPG's have for stealth, since it's basically perma while also being usable in combat which is crazy.

Please completely and utterly destroy the shadow arts tree and reduce the sources of stealth thief has, or make it so stealth cannot stack duration. Shadow Meld should absolutely not remove revealed, as counters to counters is bad game design. You should still nerf the shadow arts tree, though.

[Virdo.1540]

The problem is that permastealth thieves are able to ignore game mechanics, like freshly taken keeps, that should mark every player. Or traps. Or reveals.... or even radar

nothing is working with this stuff. Make stealth finally like superspeed. So it doesnt add in duration -> no permastealth -> less mechanic-ignoring

[Jugglemonkey.8741]

@Shiyo.3578 said:Thief main here. Perma stealth is a global game issue, and not just a WvW one.

The original design of stealth(or so I thought), and why it's usable in combat unlike other MMO's, is because you were only supposed to have limited amounts of stealth and never perma stealth. However, now after shadow art traitline buffs(why? no one wants to fight SA thieves) and some other changes over the past 5+ years stealth has gotten too easy and spammable on thief. You now can just perma stealth all over the place.

At this point, this game has the most overpowered stealth I've ever seen in the MMORPG genre. In most games, stealth can only be used out of combat(or on a long cooldown mid-combat), being hit removes you from stealth, and you can see the stealthed player if you get near them but has no duratio. GW2 however, does not have any of these disadvantages, and has advantages on top of having no disadvantages. It's absurd.

At this point, we might as well just have all the restrictions that most MMORPG's have for stealth, since it's basically perma while also being usable in combat which is crazy.

Please completely and utterly destroy the shadow arts tree and reduce the sources of stealth thief has, or make it so stealth cannot stack duration. Shadow Meld should absolutely not remove revealed, as counters to counters is bad game design. You should still nerf the shadow arts tree, though.

It would be a lot simpler just to remove the thief portal. Because nobody really asked for a multi person portal on thief in the first place, just for shadow trap to not get stuck on scenery.

[NotFound.7813]

@Mokk.2397 said:

@pninak.1069 said:use target painter traps. if you get him with one he is pretty much dead. and even if you don't get him you punish the next zerg capturing the keep by draining supplies.

Target painters? A Band Aid to fix a severed leg. Why should it be necessary to have to use a gimmick outside of existing reveals to deal with one class. NO OTHER CLASS REQUIRES THE PURCHASE OF SPECIAL EQUIPMENT FIGHT IT!!! The excessive stealth is servery busted so FIX IT !

Thieves has no other utility in the game mode since everyone can fast roam aroud the map with mount.

[Infusion.7149]

Maybe thief portal shouldn't be able to portal people into keeps then (where you can't drop a portal and take it back in , similar to scourges' swell which has pathing limitations). Mesmer portal was fine for the longest time.

I switched from mesmer to thief when roaming due to the portal addition to thief. There is zero reason to run a thief otherwise over another engineer or tempest while in squad as bomb kit and mortar kit provide more AoE pressure than daredevil on staff. The difference is the amount of spikey damage you can output on staff daredevil, while also being able to put up portal if your group wipes (just swap templates/gear to stealth mode).

[melody.2601]

The hate on a simply countered mechanic is Insane, here some food for your thoughts:-Thief's only role which is already a dead meme is ROAMER.-He can provide nothing to a WvW Raid and is not even Welcome to a lot of them.-As a ROAMER he pretty much loses to almost all other decent ROAMER classes in a 1v1 Situation, let alone if he tries to Assassinate someone in a Camp, he just get's blindfucked by Guards.

Since Roaming is a dead meme the only thing he can bring to the table to be useful for his Server is to hide in a good damn Keep and try to Portal people in, while his Participation goes down and down and down since people search for him, he has to be constantly on the move.Also there isnt such thing as "Perma Stealth", you have to constantly keep it up, and its pretty obvious if out of nowhere there is some Dark Combo Field around, or Shadow Refuge, let alone if people play Thief and know exactly all the juicy hiding spots, hes is easily catched.

If you think this is over-the-top broken and op, just go ahead and play it, see for yourself if its really like you think it is.I bet you won't, cause it is far easier to blame and cry non-stop like the single mother raised baby you are.