perm stealth

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

And here I am browsing the forums trying to recruit for an all thief mentor and wvw zerg bust guild and people still hold true to thieves...i love my fellow thief..."hey man nice shot" song comes to mind. if you dont play thief you cant deligate anything pertaining to its changes.

[NuhDah.9812]

Since I see this topic is still so popular after months, here's an educational video I just stumbled upon: 

 

[TheQuickFox.3826]

I dislike stealth in general because it messes up my target selection. And I use target selection to cast my spells.

It would be nice if the game remembered the target selection after the target stealth is over.

Now players go in and out of stealth so often that I just get discouraged and stop trying because any target selection I make gets undone in 3 seconds.

Usually the stealthing player murders my char afterwards as thanks.

[kash.9213]

3 hours ago, TheQuickFox.3826 said:

I dislike stealth in general because it messes up my target selection. And I use target selection to cast my spells.

It would be nice if the game remembered the target selection after the target stealth is over.

Now players go in and out of stealth so often that I just get discouraged and stop trying because any target selection I make gets undone in 3 seconds.

Usually the stealthing player murders my char afterwards as thanks.

I'd be fine with that within some radius. Mark stays active when people go into stealth and is a good way to load someone up with stuff like Basilik Venom before they do but they still get full stealth since I don't see the mark unless I see the numbers from Stolen Skill.

[Thornwolf.9721]

I prefer how warhammer online did it, you have your perfect stealth. But should you take damage or engage an enemy the stealth would be done and you have to commit unless you find a way to break combat and its off cooldown. Typically the witch hunter or witch elf will try to burst you but most of the time you wont be one shot unless the gear disparity was huge.

Id prefer this for thief as a whole, you stealth but once you engage you will struggle to stealth again if at all because the game is telling you to commit to the fight you chose. As it stands now thieves just run away and constantly stealth; Its a cowards gameplay where if they engage you once they will simply stealth and wait and constantly teleport around. Even messmer in all its shenanigan's is more of a back and forth than thief is. If the thief can't burst you in one shot, he's gone and wont bother trying again because to him its waste of effort and time.

Its not hard to win fights when you can decide to just walk away unlike most other classes who actually have to continue to engage or run for their lives with their enemy breathing down their neck. Thief players of course will defend it, but I Remember when thieves were complaining about rangers/Rev's/SB's and reveal as a mechanic. Hell reveal only works half the time because they do have a skill which will remove it, and normally a class only really has one reveal.

So, simple fix? Next Expansion EVERYONE gets access to stealth. Problem solved. Give my revenant or warrior stealth so if I decide I don't want to fight the thief I can just stealth and F-off too! Then everyone can be happy. I get the same tools they have without having to play a class I don't prefer, and their precious mechanic is left intact. Everyone wins. Considering I've watched thieves murdering people en-mass recently and mirages being well... just like they were? Honestly It wouldn't surprise me if in reality we all just get thief-lit specs on most classes kek.

[TrollingDemigod.3041]

56 minutes ago, Thornwolf.9721 said:

I prefer how warhammer online did it, you have your perfect stealth. But should you take damage or engage an enemy the stealth would be done and you have to commit unless you find a way to break combat and its off cooldown. Typically the witch hunter or witch elf will try to burst you but most of the time you wont be one shot unless the gear disparity was huge.

Id prefer this for thief as a whole, you stealth but once you engage you will struggle to stealth again if at all because the game is telling you to commit to the fight you chose. As it stands now thieves just run away and constantly stealth; Its a cowards gameplay where if they engage you once they will simply stealth and wait and constantly teleport around. Even messmer in all its shenanigan's is more of a back and forth than thief is. If the thief can't burst you in one shot, he's gone and wont bother trying again because to him its waste of effort and time.

Its not hard to win fights when you can decide to just walk away unlike most other classes who actually have to continue to engage or run for their lives with their enemy breathing down their neck. Thief players of course will defend it, but I Remember when thieves were complaining about rangers/Rev's/SB's and reveal as a mechanic. Hell reveal only works half the time because they do have a skill which will remove it, and normally a class only really has one reveal.

So, simple fix? Next Expansion EVERYONE gets access to stealth. Problem solved. Give my revenant or warrior stealth so if I decide I don't want to fight the thief I can just stealth and F-off too! Then everyone can be happy. I get the same tools they have without having to play a class I don't prefer, and their precious mechanic is left intact. Everyone wins. Considering I've watched thieves murdering people en-mass recently and mirages being well... just like they were? Honestly It wouldn't surprise me if in reality we all just get thief-lit specs on most classes kek.

It wouldn't work well in Gw2, because thief not only have broken stealth access, but also quite a bit of mobility, so they can still disengage rather easily from pretty much everything in the game if they want to...

[Psycoprophet.8107]

1 hour ago, Thornwolf.9721 said:

I prefer how warhammer online did it, you have your perfect stealth. But should you take damage or engage an enemy the stealth would be done and you have to commit unless you find a way to break combat and its off cooldown. Typically the witch hunter or witch elf will try to burst you but most of the time you wont be one shot unless the gear disparity was huge.

Id prefer this for thief as a whole, you stealth but once you engage you will struggle to stealth again if at all because the game is telling you to commit to the fight you chose. As it stands now thieves just run away and constantly stealth; Its a cowards gameplay where if they engage you once they will simply stealth and wait and constantly teleport around. Even messmer in all its shenanigan's is more of a back and forth than thief is. If the thief can't burst you in one shot, he's gone and wont bother trying again because to him its waste of effort and time.

Its not hard to win fights when you can decide to just walk away unlike most other classes who actually have to continue to engage or run for their lives with their enemy breathing down their neck. Thief players of course will defend it, but I Remember when thieves were complaining about rangers/Rev's/SB's and reveal as a mechanic. Hell reveal only works half the time because they do have a skill which will remove it, and normally a class only really has one reveal.

So, simple fix? Next Expansion EVERYONE gets access to stealth. Problem solved. Give my revenant or warrior stealth so if I decide I don't want to fight the thief I can just stealth and F-off too! Then everyone can be happy. I get the same tools they have without having to play a class I don't prefer, and their precious mechanic is left intact. Everyone wins. Considering I've watched thieves murdering people en-mass recently and mirages being well... just like they were? Honestly It wouldn't surprise me if in reality we all just get thief-lit specs on most classes kek.

Yeah different games use different designs for a reason. If they implemented this as a way to force thief to commit to fights its starts they would have to also nerf thiefs mobility which then a huge number of players would quit a already low populated game due to 2 things. 1 thief wouldn't feel like a rogue class, tip for u is thats why they chose a rogue class is they enjoy the playstyle. 2 thieves that stayed in the game and on the class would literally never engage most opponent as all the whiners in this community have got thieves damage so nerfed not cuz thief was actually op but due to them just being bad at the game and crying, the majority anyway. Why would a squishy class without high disengage potential engage an opponent when their bursts will do 1/4 if even that of the enemies total hp while being met with equal or higher burts and sustained damage by tankier classes? They wouldn't.

[Thornwolf.9721]

26 minutes ago, Psycoprophet.8107 said:

Yeah different games use different designs for a reason. If they implemented this as a way to force thief to commit to fights its starts they would have to also nerf thiefs mobility which then a huge number of players would quit a already low populated game due to 2 things. 1 thief wouldn't feel like a rogue class, tip for u is thats why they chose a rogue class is they enjoy the playstyle. 2 thieves that stayed in the game and on the class would literally never engage most opponent as all the whiners in this community have got thieves damage so nerfed not cuz thief was actually op but due to them just being bad at the game and crying, the majority anyway. Why would a squishy class without high disengage potential engage an opponent when their bursts will do 1/4 if even that of the enemies total hp while being met with equal or higher burts and sustained damage by tankier classes? They wouldn't.

simply put, Id gladly let them be brought up in sustain and damage in exchange for their stealth as it is currently being retooled to be more like Warhammers. Until that day comes, I have no respect for thief players. Just how it is; I at least want to have a back and forth and see the fight not just erupt from no where or worse yet be engaged and it just decide it doesn't wana fight and F-off after it can't kill me in one rotation.

So no, not everyone views it as you describe. I see a rogue as a duelist not someone who just pops in and then runs when it doesn't go initially in their favor. Rogues in WoW were much more fun to fight, as are they in most interactions... thieves in guild wars are just no fun to fight. The assassin didn't need stealth in GW1, make them more like that and I might even consider playing one or having one on my account. But their current playstyle is just unattractive to me. Nor do I want to fight them, normally Ill just avoid them because the fight is pointless and wont be enjoyed on my end.

[kash.9213]

1 hour ago, TrollingDemigod.3041 said:

It wouldn't work well in Gw2, because thief not only have broken stealth access, but also quite a bit of mobility, so they can still disengage rather easily from pretty much everything in the game if they want to...

Most of thief stealth and mobility can be stopped and apart from a couple of kit/trait combos it's not at all broken. 

 

2 hours ago, Thornwolf.9721 said:

I prefer how warhammer online did it, you have your perfect stealth. But should you take damage or engage an enemy the stealth would be done and you have to commit unless you find a way to break combat and its off cooldown. Typically the witch hunter or witch elf will try to burst you but most of the time you wont be one shot unless the gear disparity was huge.

Id prefer this for thief as a whole, you stealth but once you engage you will struggle to stealth again if at all because the game is telling you to commit to the fight you chose. As it stands now thieves just run away and constantly stealth; Its a cowards gameplay where if they engage you once they will simply stealth and wait and constantly teleport around. Even messmer in all its shenanigan's is more of a back and forth than thief is. If the thief can't burst you in one shot, he's gone and wont bother trying again because to him its waste of effort and time.

Its not hard to win fights when you can decide to just walk away unlike most other classes who actually have to continue to engage or run for their lives with their enemy breathing down their neck. Thief players of course will defend it, but I Remember when thieves were complaining about rangers/Rev's/SB's and reveal as a mechanic. Hell reveal only works half the time because they do have a skill which will remove it, and normally a class only really has one reveal.

So, simple fix? Next Expansion EVERYONE gets access to stealth. Problem solved. Give my revenant or warrior stealth so if I decide I don't want to fight the thief I can just stealth and F-off too! Then everyone can be happy. I get the same tools they have without having to play a class I don't prefer, and their precious mechanic is left intact. Everyone wins. Considering I've watched thieves murdering people en-mass recently and mirages being well... just like they were? Honestly It wouldn't surprise me if in reality we all just get thief-lit specs on most classes kek.

No one is winning a fight by disengaging or walking away, the other person wins that. What are you even talking about? Stealth itself isn't a huge deal and only being able to use one Stealth Attack, that is normally avoidable, per a fight is one of the dumbest suggestions yet. Before you claim I'm just defending my class, I don't play with excessive stealth or mobility, it's not needed, but I do play with timing which is usually the reality behind most of the complaints on this forum. 

 

Go ahead and give everyone stealth. You wont know what to do with it and will be back here crying about something. 

Edited June 2, 2021 by kash.9213

[NuhDah.9812]

4 hours ago, Thornwolf.9721 said:

I prefer how warhammer online did it, you have your perfect stealth. But should you take damage or engage an enemy the stealth would be done and you have to commit unless you find a way to break combat and its off cooldown. Typically the witch hunter or witch elf will try to burst you but most of the time you wont be one shot unless the gear disparity was huge.

Id prefer this for thief as a whole, you stealth but once you engage you will struggle to stealth again if at all because the game is telling you to commit to the fight you chose. As it stands now thieves just run away and constantly stealth; Its a cowards gameplay where if they engage you once they will simply stealth and wait and constantly teleport around. Even messmer in all its shenanigan's is more of a back and forth than thief is. If the thief can't burst you in one shot, he's gone and wont bother trying again because to him its waste of effort and time.

Its not hard to win fights when you can decide to just walk away unlike most other classes who actually have to continue to engage or run for their lives with their enemy breathing down their neck. Thief players of course will defend it, but I Remember when thieves were complaining about rangers/Rev's/SB's and reveal as a mechanic. Hell reveal only works half the time because they do have a skill which will remove it, and normally a class only really has one reveal.

So, simple fix? Next Expansion EVERYONE gets access to stealth. Problem solved. Give my revenant or warrior stealth so if I decide I don't want to fight the thief I can just stealth and F-off too! Then everyone can be happy. I get the same tools they have without having to play a class I don't prefer, and their precious mechanic is left intact. Everyone wins. Considering I've watched thieves murdering people en-mass recently and mirages being well... just like they were? Honestly It wouldn't surprise me if in reality we all just get thief-lit specs on most classes kek.

I really don't get why people are so hung on how stealth works in other games... this is how it works here in gw2 and instead of dreaming about how would you fight against it if it was like in another game which has totally different mechanics than gw2, why not embrace the way it works here and spend more time towards learning how to use it / deal with it in the game. This subject was brought up over and over again and, leaving aside the hate comments, there were always people who explained or showcased how they fight against stealth enemies, how they build to be able to overall be survivable enough in WvW (meaning this includes ambushes), how they bait the stealth user enemies, how they use terrain against them etc. I'm sure instead of pondering about how would it play if X mechanic would be something it isn't, or cry about removing that said mechanic or change it, being realistic and learn about it would be way more helpful. Otherwise it's like asking yourself how would basketball be if you had to use baseball bats instead of throwing the ball with your hands and started making strategies around this assumption.

[Zawn.9647]

On 4/19/2021 at 11:58 PM, DeceiverX.8361 said:

So let me get this straight:

• You take him to about 500hp while burning and he uses SR. Without PoK, he goes down even earlier and deals less damage.
• You hear the downstate skills trigger at high volume and thus point-blank, and should know the range in which he can be from his stealth or TP skill.
• D/D Fire 1 is a PbAoE short-ranged AA that does not need a target, and instead you stand idle for 7 straight seconds doing absolutely nothing to force the issue at all nor sweep for the target. I get there's a lack of need to burn skills but come on, this is freebies.
• Downstate 2 has a 2s delay so you had a few casts of D/D Fire 1 to attempt to sweep for his cast location and further delay his res.
• You cast your other skills in the direction you were already facing when he went down which 9/10 times is not where they TP to BECAUSE of the ability for you to sweep with AA.
• You had ample time and the supply to throw a target painter or two to cordon off your prediction of where he might be if your efforts failed; you were not actively sieging or building siege anyways.
• You literally downed the guy despite him using stealth the whole fight with 75% of your health left without even using Water/Frost Aura (and never did after, either) and had ample opportunity to AoE SR way more than you did because you actively didn't switch to any elements for more AoE pressure to stifle his res. That fight hasnothing to do with 90% of thief's "stealth" gameplay but was entirely him sitting in SR and you doing nothing to punish. If you think SR is OP, just say it.
• You saw the "Miss" show up after his self res while you were casting skills and didn't dodge or turn much at all, knowing he was in melee and likely behind you because of the blind and otherwise lack of animations; Shadow Shot's projectile is visible from stealth even if he attempted the port from range, to which even on missed damage, he still teleports, so you know he wasn't coming in from range or would have already used a gap close on Steal to have gotten the miss, meaning turn and burn.
• You died with extra dodges unused earlier in the fight when he used his second engage to chase you down.
• You saw his shadowstep origin marker after getting engaged via the shadowstep into melee and walked BACK INTO IT. You literally gave him another free teleport engage and stunbreak into your exact position.
• You didn't retarget him immediately which cuts off any remaining info you could have gotten and makes him harder to hit. For the remainder of the fight. Press Tab.
• His stealth after the res was extremely low. You literally would have won this fight by hitting him once or twice with stray AoE's after the SR.
• You did nothing the entire video to punish UC and gave him full condition control via not using water or healing in the downed state period.

I'm sorry but you had a crazy amount of info and tons of options and all the tools to kill this guy and just... missed all of the cues to fight back or finish him off and didn't use your skills well to press the advantage. Instead, you stood around doing basically nothing and let him reset on you, and then when he failed his burst, you just gave him another chance to do it without any kind of real negation strategies or attempts to trade back.

Even when watching the video the first time, I instinctively was internally thinking "Dodge now" for half the video every single time he re-engaged. Not one wrong prediction. Almost 90% of thieves play the same way because it's really the same tactic to maximize their output damage and dueling safety.

Half of those are bare minimum level skills while roaming or playing into anything with stealth, including mesmer, ranger, and even engineer. You have to think a level deeper when dealing with stealthed opponents and really understand your kit and thiers, but there are ample opportunities to snuff them out. Mesmer, Ranger and Engi are much harder to deal with given their slightly-to-significantly higher durability, and your lack of use of all your kit options really suggests to me that you will absolutely struggle with those as well if they're played remotely competently.

D/P and sustained stealth is a problem for a lot of reasons, but your video is a horrible example because you had the victory almost entirely clinched, and did nothing with the astronomical lead and almost guaranteed stomp you generated. You have to understand thief to beat it, but once you do, in situations like those, the downed state is a free kill.

If you want to have a serious conversation about thief and stealth... you need to get better at understanding the class first, because that knowledge is clearly lacking.

HAHAHAHA are you joking or something?
the guy has literally to use audio, guess the position based on previous data, do maths...
while the thief just press a couple buttons to stay in stealth for 5 minutes... and the issue is that the player didnt pay enough attention? ROFL

The video is a perfect example why perma stealth if ridiculous. He luckily downed the other played without even seeing him and couldnt pinpoint the exact location to confirm the kill since thieves can teleport and stealth in downstate.

But yeah. Must be the elementalist fault to not guess correct where the thief went. INCREDIBLE 🙂

[NuhDah.9812]

47 minutes ago, Zawn.9647 said:

the guy has literally to use audio, guess the position based on previous data, do maths...
while the thief just press a couple buttons to stay in stealth for 5 minutes...

woh, this is almost hilarious, indeed. If having audio is an issue in this day and age... I mean it's not like this game is tetris or worm from back in the old ages. It's a given that if a competitive game mode offers positional sound someone who for whatever reason doesn't use the ingame sound will not be able to perform properly.

 

Guessing position is not actually a must, even if it's doable to an extent, you only need to move around and spam AA and if you hit the thief and interrupt this way his res phase he will be revealed before he can rally. Doing nothing won't help though, and also the 5minutes stealth is a huge exaggeration in this specific case at least when the thief was down. After the SR finishes up the stealth time is 11seconds just so you know. It is a lot but as I said, not enough for someone to rally if they get hit during that time. Also "do math" is like saying you need consciously calculate the length of your stepping when you walk... Sorry to burst your bubble, but the truth is the brain does it subconsciously for us... well at least if we have one... in other words, you don't need to worry about the extreme effort of thinking in this case.

 

The way elementalists can spam aoe all over the simple fact that the guy was an elementalist and did nothing is what killed them.

Edited June 3, 2021 by NuhDah.9812

[BeepBoopBop.5403]

1 hour ago, Zawn.9647 said:

HAHAHAHA are you joking or something?
the guy has literally to use audio, guess the position based on previous data, do maths...
while the thief just press a couple buttons to stay in stealth for 5 minutes... and the issue is that the player didnt pay enough attention? ROFL

The video is a perfect example why perma stealth if ridiculous. He luckily downed the other played without even seeing him and couldnt pinpoint the exact location to confirm the kill since thieves can teleport and stealth in downstate.

But yeah. Must be the elementalist fault to not guess correct where the thief went. INCREDIBLE 🙂

Or you can look at the map if that isn't too hard for you. 00:26 the ele is standing right on top of the downed thief on the mini map. Shadow Refuge self rez isn't even anything new and was way more common in core GW2.

 

 

Edited June 3, 2021 by BeepBoopBop.5403

[Zok.4956]

On 6/1/2021 at 12:52 AM, anduriell.6280 said:

Probably you aren't playing with a cheesy build, i did try thief because and i liked it. Definitely more forgiving than a ranger. 

 

So, what easy-cheesy build are you running?

[anduriell.6280]

4 minutes ago, Zok.4956 said:

 

So, what easy-cheesy build are you running?

something similar to this

https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Deadeye_-_SA_Rifle_Roamer

or this

https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Deadeye_-_Poisonous_Rifle_Roamer

 

Depending on the link.  Sometimes feels better to be one shotting from stealth other need to be more tanky. I am a big fan of the shortbow thou for mobility if i need to reposition. 

[Widmo.3186]

How about you f**king play the game instead of crying. Like this ele video above, first Id consider why Im a bad player and what mistakes im making, then how to improve, then improve and THEN start crying about state of stealth. You are just straight up jumping from point 1 to point 5, well done.

There, I found you a random d/p teef playing meta drd build with food, utility and jump dodging. Beaten on 2012 spec. Life is hard, isnt it?
 

PS: Not saying that stealth is fine (actually it is, SA traitline isnt). But first things first, its like 1500 elo chess player crying about how queen is OP, jesus...

[schokelmei.8271]

19 hours ago, kash.9213 said:

No one is winning a fight by disengaging or walking away, the other person wins that.

 

 

No one is winning, but the other person does? No, it's the opposite. The thief won, because even if he f##d up, he still can run away. When you kitten up on say Necromancer, you can't run and die and the other person won.

This thief logic isn't working really.

[Caedmon.6798]

On 6/2/2021 at 2:46 PM, TheQuickFox.3826 said:

I dislike stealth in general because it messes up my target selection. And I use target selection to cast my spells.

It would be nice if the game remembered the target selection after the target stealth is over.

Now players go in and out of stealth so often that I just get discouraged and stop trying because any target selection I make gets undone in 3 seconds.

Usually the stealthing player murders my char afterwards as thanks.

Actually there's a key to change in the options menu called "Previous Target". Its especially great vs mesmers aswell. It does exactly what it says,you target someone with your normal targeting method and when he stealths and reveals himself again this key will automatically target him again.

 

Edited June 3, 2021 by Caedmon.6798

[Psycoprophet.8107]

3 hours ago, Zawn.9647 said:

HAHAHAHA are you joking or something?
the guy has literally to use audio, guess the position based on previous data, do maths...
while the thief just press a couple buttons to stay in stealth for 5 minutes... and the issue is that the player didnt pay enough attention? ROFL

The video is a perfect example why perma stealth if ridiculous. He luckily downed the other played without even seeing him and couldnt pinpoint the exact location to confirm the kill since thieves can teleport and stealth in downstate.

But yeah. Must be the elementalist fault to not guess correct where the thief went. INCREDIBLE 🙂

How do u expect anyone to take u seriously when u make asinine hyperbolic comments like thief just presses a couple skills and stealths for 5 mins? Are u a new player or someone who had 0 clue how thief even works or its skills for that matter? 

Most viable builds that are heavily invested in stealth still need to use and continue to use most of its global attack resources to maintain stealth. If ur talking DE its still no different unless ur talking about a noob thief that wasting its 2 charges of meld which is stupid cuz those are ur reveal counters, thier heal which is also completely stupid to waste when not needed. After this a thief usually runs 1 stealth utility being either smoke, blinding or refuge and neither of those with the combination of wasting both meld or ur heal result in 2 mins of stealth let alone 5 lmao.  If u wanna traverse long distances  unseen for some stupid reason sure u could go several mins in stealth but u will be using ur ini in combination with utility skills this leaving u pretty tapped if engaging combat right outa stealth in most cases unless it worked out that u hit ur blinding or refuge right before combat to allow ini to build before attacking and in that case uve blown ur stealth utility if u need it to disengage. This is of course unless u also wasted ur reveal counter or heal at the start before engaging which would be stupid. Try actually playing thief before crying about it, 9h wait let me guess u main thief like all the other whiners state often haha.

[kash.9213]

38 minutes ago, gebrechen.5643 said:

 

 

No one is winning, but the other person does? No, it's the opposite. The thief won, because even if he f##d up, he still can run away. When you kitten up on say Necromancer, you can't run and die and the other person won.

This thief logic isn't working really.

Whoever sent the other away won the fight. What kind of mental gymnastics are you attempting to stumble around a bad take? 

[DemonSeed.3528]

On 6/2/2021 at 8:46 PM, TheQuickFox.3826 said:

I dislike stealth in general because it messes up my target selection. And I use target selection to cast my spells.

It would be nice if the game remembered the target selection after the target stealth is over.

Now players go in and out of stealth so often that I just get discouraged and stop trying because any target selection I make gets undone in 3 seconds.

Usually the stealthing player murders my char afterwards as thanks.

I have keybinds to toggle snap to ground/autotarget for this reason specifically. In fact I wonder why most thieves don't complain about it because it also helps me noscope them in certain situations if you time it correctly, even without a channeled skill.

[DemonSeed.3528]

33 minutes ago, Caedmon.6798 said:

Actually there's a key to change in the options menu called "Previous Target". Its especially great vs mesmers aswell. It does exactly what it says,you target someone with your normal targeting method and when he stealths and reveals himself again this key will automatically target him again.

 

Ahh thanks, I will check this one out - I've been toggling autotarget/snap to ground for years to get around this problem, maybe this will enhance it lol.

[Shroud.2307]

I don't think I've joined this circus yet, so I'm going to leave my two cents. 

The more Thief gets nerfed the higher the skill floor gets. It's not terribly hard to pick up a Shadow Arts Thief and to have moderate success, but anything else takes a certain level practice compared to most other classes/specs (that's not to say Thief is far and away the highest skill floor, just that as time has gone on it has become harder to succeed with one without a lot of knowledge). 

I believe Thief and Revenant are the only two classes with "near" infinite skill ceilings. You can always improve with them just because of the way they're designed. They have flexible tools and unique skill interaction that means as long as your reflexes and strategies are improving, so too will your results. Other classes will eventually plateau in that you could watch any of the "best" on that given class and see little difference in how they handle fights.

Not really the point of the thread, I just wanted to say that because I think it'll better outline the following.

Stealth is poorly designed in GW2. There are lots of ways to deal with it, but a lot of it is also guesswork, and it doesn't feel good to spend a skill(s) anticipating followup when the Thief decided not to attack. Someone camping Stealth can force you to burn resources by doing literally nothing but making you anxious, and yet using skills in anticipation is still the right way to handle it because leaving yourself open is just as dangerous.
Meaning there's really no right move after they've entered Stealth, the only right move is to stop them from entering Stealth at all. But then we have the next problem which is instant Stealth access like gaining Stealth on Withdraw (an Evade which only a handful of things can interrupt) on dodge with Deadeye, Blinding Powder, etc.
Of course, Thief has resources too, so I'm not saying all of this as though it can dig in to a magical bag of instantly recharged cooldowns. More or less I'm talking about low cost resources like D/P 2 -> 5 or DE on dodge.

The point is that fighting a Stealth heavy build doesn't have much counterplay. It's there, but with a little distance on the field, the Thief can greatly reduce your chances to employ that counterplay. And thus no one likes to fight it because you know there are situations proper skill will do next to nothing (sometimes literally nothing) to end the fight.

With that said, and kind of going back to what I wrote in the first half of this, Thief has been repeatedly nerfed and a big part of the reason so many play this kind of build is because it's forgiving, which Thief as a whole is not, and because it's one of the few things left Thief has that's still effective. That isn't to say non-Shadow Arts builds can't work however, just that they're much harder to play and typically only experienced and stubborn Thieves will do so.

And I can't say I blame some of them for playing SA... It doesn't feel good to fight it for the reasons I outlined above... And guess what, it doesn't feel good to fight a lot of things as a Thief without Shadow Arts too. Because random passive procs and sustain heavy builds can neuter a Thief's ability to kill and they're punished a lot more heavily for missing critically timed interrupts or bursts. That's why so often they'll hard kite or OOC if they do, because they don't have the sustain to stay in a fight after missing their opportunity to turn it. Shadow Arts lets them have that "sustain".

Honestly, players just need to learn to accept that if Thieves are to have any viability, it's either going to be as high Stealth uptime builds, or high spike builds. It's a +1 class designed to hit you when your back is turned, what do you expect? I'd rather get spiked by a Thief than a Ranger anyway because at least they risk taking damage while hitting me.
 

Quote

[ And note: for anyone who doesn't read all of this ]
I've always felt pretty neutral about Stealth. I don't think it's well designed, and Stealth heavy builds can be frustrating at times, but generally speaking there are things I hate a lot more than Stealth. So none of this is a complaint, just joining the 15 page long conversation with some thoughts of my own.

 

Edited June 3, 2021 by Shroud.2307

[szeng.1267]

50 minutes ago, kash.9213 said:

Whoever sent the other away won the fight. What kind of mental gymnastics are you attempting to stumble around a bad take? 

So if someone sucker punched a guy but wasn't able to knock him out but was able to successfully run away lost and some how the person that got sucker punched won? What kind of mental gymnastics are YOU attempting? 

[kash.9213]

25 minutes ago, Shroud.2307 said:

I don't think I've joined this circus yet, so I'm going to leave my two cents. 

The more Thief gets nerfed the higher the skill floor gets. It's not terribly hard to pick up a Shadow Arts Thief and to have moderate success, but anything else takes a certain level practice compared to most other classes/specs (that's not to say Thief is far and away the highest skill floor, just that as time has gone on it has become harder to succeed with one without a lot of knowledge). 

I believe Thief and Revenant are the only two classes with "near" infinite skill ceilings. You can always improve with them just because of the way they're designed. They have flexible tools and unique skill interaction that means as long as your reflexes and strategies are improving, so too will your results. Other classes will eventually plateau in that you could watch any of the "best" on that given class and see little difference in how they handle fights.

Not really the point of the thread, I just wanted to say that because I think it'll better outline the following.

Stealth is poorly designed in GW2. There are lots of ways to deal with it, but a lot of it is also guesswork, and it doesn't feel good to spend a skill(s) anticipating followup when the Thief decided not to attack. Someone camping Stealth can force you to burn resources by doing literally nothing but making you anxious, and yet using skills in anticipation is still the right way to handle it because leaving yourself open is just as dangerous.
Meaning there's really no right move after they've entered Stealth, the only right move is to stop them from entering Stealth at all. But then we have the next problem which is instant Stealth access like gaining Stealth on Withdraw (an Evade which only a handful of things can interrupt) on dodge with Deadeye, Blinding Powder, etc.
Of course, Thief has resources too, so I'm not saying all of this as though it can dig in to a magical bag of instantly recharged cooldowns. More or less I'm talking about low cost resources like D/P 2 -> 5 or DE on dodge.

The point is that fighting a Stealth heavy build doesn't have much counterplay. It's there, but with a little distance on the field, the Thief can greatly reduce your chances to employ that counterplay. And thus no one likes to fight it because you know there are situations proper skill will do next to nothing (sometimes literally nothing) to end the fight.

With that said, and kind of going back to what I wrote in the first half of this, Thief has been repeatedly nerfed and a big part of the reason so many play this kind of build is because it's forgiving, which Thief as a whole is not, and because it's one of the few things left Thief has that's still effective. That isn't to say non-Shadow Arts builds can't work however, just that they're much harder to play and typically only experienced and stubborn Thieves will do so.

And I can't say I blame some of them for playing SA... It doesn't feel good to fight it for the reasons I outlined above... And guess what, it doesn't feel good to fight a lot of things as a Thief without Shadow Arts too. Because random passive procs and sustain heavy builds can neuter a Thief's ability to kill and they're punished a lot more heavily for missing critically timed interrupts or bursts. That's why so often they'll hard kite or OOC if they do, because they don't have the sustain to stay in a fight after missing their opportunity to turn it. Shadow Arts lets them have that "sustain".

Honestly, players just need to learn to accept that if Thieves are to have any viability, it's either going to be as high Stealth uptime builds, or high spike builds. It's a +1 class designed to hit you when your back is turned, what do you expect? I'd rather get spiked by a Thief than a Ranger anyway because at least they risk taking damage while hitting me.
 

 

That's a good breakdown of how funneled things can get. I use SA to cover people a lot because otherwise we both get melted. I like the support and sustain aspects of that trait line but some stuff is annoying like stealth on heal skill where I'd rather be more deliberate, sort of like how Silent Scope almost making things more difficult convoluting Dodge and to manage my reveals. Some parts of SA, Dash, Shadow Meld, Infiltrators Arrow, and somewhat Dagger/pistol really put a bullseye on everything else regardless of their effectiveness beyond the immediate visual but. Something like Meld I think is actually just plain overpowered and keeps DE from progressing where there could be better play around Kneel.