If you were in charge of redesigning Guild Wars 2, what would you do about stealth?

[sarkysek.1085]

Leave stealth as it is, but delete stealth oneshot thief builds

[ilmi.5369]

Leave stealth at it is. All personal bias aside, especially team stealth is such a great mechanic if you are on the giving end.

But reconsider stealth application by dodge rolling and also also utilities to remove the revealed debuff should be reworked.

[RisenHowl.2419]

Make stealth a boon that's affected by concentration, give most stealth skills a 2s duration.

 

That way you can only perma stealth with a boon build, which would cut down on damage potential

[Whitworth.7259]

Stealth is fine. It has work arounds if you can play well enough. Seeing a player stealth up and then predicting their movements with your AoE to see them reveal in downstate is one of _the_ most satisfying feelings in GW2 PvP.

 

I'd say maybe make reveal skills more accessible to specific classes. Being able to remove reveal and then stealth with Shadow Meld is currently overtuned, so do something about that and we'll get less people qqing about Deadeye.

[apharma.3741]

> @"Nebilim.5127" said:

> You can no longer stack stealth

> Coming out of stealth reveals you, if you attack or not

>

> There fixed, now you have to make a choice between running away or going for attack, and won't be able to do anything without impunity.

 

I would be interested in seeing how this plays out and would have suggested it myself. I would also completely remove traits like lock on, I think something like sick em might be fine but an eye would need to be kept on it as some classes rely on short duration stealth.

[incisorr.9502]

id change it

 

stealth in gw2 is very bad. There should be longer revealed periods that can't be removed by anything (like DE's elite.. ) and the duration shouldnt stack as much

[MyPuppy.8970]

I'd make blood trails if the target is bleeding, or smoke if the target is burning.

[Xuazinegueri.3592]

I would like to see stealth getting ripped when taking damage, but having a 3sec of "not revealing" just after stealthing. And after leaving stealth get a 3sec debuff of reveal, so they cant insta stealth again. They can keep stacking stealth tho.

[whoknocks.4935]

> @"spartan.9421" said:

> I would add a stealth tutorial so people would learn how to use it and counter it rather than just run to the forums and complain every. Single. Day.

 

Yeah go ahead, counter stealth on dodge from deadeye and goodluck, ah you say reveal? Shadow meld say hi.

 

In all the other cases stealth is pretty counterable, but not deadeye kind of stealth.

[XECOR.2814]

> @"RisenHowl.2419" said:

> Make stealth a boon that's affected by concentration, give most stealth skills a 2s duration.

>

> That way you can only perma stealth with a boon build, which would cut down on damage potential

 

I completely agree, and it could be corrupted to reveal as well so necromancers can have better matchup against thief unlike now.

[Vagrant.7206]

Make revealed last longer. That's it.

[SteepledHat.1345]

Nothing, even deadeye is fine. It's all fine.

[Rodzynald.5897]

> @"mortrialus.3062" said:

> > @"The Ace.9105" said:

> > Make stealth to break when taking damage.

> This would literally make stealth worthless in the middle of combat. Like absolutely 0 functionality except for stacking it before beginning an engagement on an enemy.

 

Exactly. Look at how stealth mechanics are implemented in other MMORPGs. Currently stealth gives too many possibilities for almost no effort.

[SoulSin.5682]

I will assume for a second that this is **not** your everyday -stealth-complain post and try to give a proper answer to the OP question.

 

I agree that in a game design perspective, implementing stealth is always a challenge.

As you prolly already noticed as some people clearly believe that a person disappearing in front of you is the most broken mechanic of existence of MMos and that stealth is only balanced when its completely useless.

 

> @"reikken.4961" said:

> Would you leave it as is? No changes needed?

> Would you make a few small tweaks?

> Would you lay down a full out overhaul?

 

My answer to this question would be the second.

I do agree that stealth stacking may need an extra look. The problem is, not stacking stealth on itself, but how the enemy players doesn't have any feedback to counter it.

You can read more of my opinion in this subject in [my post ](https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/comment/657613/#Comment_657613 "my post ") in the topic [Constructive Suggestions for Stealth](https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/52570/constructive-suggestions-for-stealth-and-thief/p1 "Constructive Suggestions for Stealth")

 

That said, the problem with stealth is always feedback. Player experience helps on solving that problem, I can't ascertain if "Player Experience" is a good design counter to "stealth". This is subjective. It's a stated fact that the higher ranking SPvP less and less players have trouble with stealth, being a major problem on low ranked games.

If you wanna design a balanced stealth system, you need to learn how to work on the feedback of a stealthed player over the opponent without killing the invisibility 100%.

 

Also, from an SPvP perspective, stealth uptime is bad. Not only you are transfering damage to your party members instead of mitigating/negating it but you also can't contest points on it. Most SPvP builds with classes with stealth reduce stealth uptime for the sake of damage or mitigating tools, or merely use the mechanics as an damage opener or forced surprise attacks.

The fact that you can't contest points on stealth negates any possibility of stealth builds to play bruiser, duelist or bunker roles. People will just contest the point that you are protecting below your feet. This forces stealth builds to play Roaming or DPS. The first is fine to a certain degree but the second has some problems, because if you play DPS and stay on stealth, you are not dealing damage. Other classes like DPS Core Guardian, DPS Scourge, DPS Reaper and DPS Herald more than often end a match with more total damage, and perhaps kills, then DPS Deadeye. Tough the later may end up with less deaths.

 

That said, I personally like the current design of Stealth in how it interacts with battle in itself. And the stealth system has being one of my greatest pros on this game.

Changes? Well perhaps, Stealth already changed a lot since the beta.

 

Broken? Not really. DeadEye need some balance attention as far as its survival mechanics work, but it's not broken from a SPvP perspective. More of an WvW issue.

 

On WvW...... its another talk.

 

 

[Aza.2105]

Stealth doesnt belong in a pvp game, unless it comes with a lot of negatives. Gw did it right, many of the gw2 shenanigans don't exist there.

[NorthernRedStar.3054]

Stealth itself is not a problem.

[Eddbopkins.2630]

Be revealed the second a thf/mes/w.e uses any skills. So that counter play to the stealth mechanic can happen and not be invisa backstacked for 10k+. So that quickness is more usefull and precious. You dont need to remain invisable up to the moment of impact, you should be revealed for the duration of the attack channeling and animation time durations.

 

This would be my change.

 

[Farkon.2170]

> @"SoulSin.5682" said:

> Broken? Not really. DeadEye need some balance attention as far as its survival mechanics work, but it's not broken from a SPvP perspective. More of an WvW issue.

 

Pretty sure it's broken in a spvp perspective when it can land multiple 16k shots at range, in stealth, and with no real forewarning.

 

 

 

[xp eke xp.6724]

Mhhh what about transform all players that stealth permanently (for the match) to a moa? At best he shouts every 2 seconds "im here!"

 

I would add this for the first April :#

 

And ofc i would change nothing to stealth itself without changing a lot around too.

 

The most important part is to teach others the game. Cause if you want to balance, you have to balance first the players!

 

Why?

- the skills/ classes/ so on are only as good as the player that use them

- if the players want to nerf something, it mostly means they want to feel as well as they thought they were before something changes. At best without doing too much themselves (so you have to be sneaky for help them learning new things)

 

Just to explain the paradox:

-> the biggest no-go is to give a player the feeling all he learned/worked for means nothing! But that means to don't change anything is better for balance but worser for dynamic at a game. GG and hf on finding the smallest frustration..

 

Its a interesting challenge and im glad that i just play the game ;)

[Alehin.3746]

Nothing. Maybe put some limits on perma stealth, but that's not really needed imo.

[myboybuzzy.5809]

> @"The Ace.9105" said:

> Make stealth to break when taking damage.

 

Engi already has that

[Miles Smiles.8951]

Make stealth sort of a realm where you can see other stealthed characters. Similar to how shadow plane worked in Paragon if any one knows it.

[phokus.8934]

> @"Farkon.2170" said:

> > @"SoulSin.5682" said:

> > Broken? Not really. DeadEye need some balance attention as far as its survival mechanics work, but it's not broken from a SPvP perspective. More of an WvW issue.

>

> Pretty sure it's broken in a spvp perspective when it can land multiple 16k shots at range, in stealth, and with no real forewarning.

>

>

>

You mean the giant indicator on your head and the sound fx warning when they’re firing on you is not having forewarning???