17 replies to this topic

[Symbiont]

the "Hidden Thief" trait lets you stealth for 2 seconds after steal, however with auto-attack on it makes this mechanic gimp because the auto-attack will put the player out of stealth immediately.
this happens when equipped with a main-hand pistol, it will shoot "Vital Shot" shot after steal instead of "Sneak Attack" and quickly unstealth the thief, rendering the stealth and stealth-skill of the trait "Hidden Thief" useless in this situation.

now an easy fix will be turning off auto-attack, however auto-attack out of stealth is great for spamming Vital Shot, so i'm kinda debating whether to keep auto-attack on or off or ditch the trait.

however if aranet developers would be so kind to make auto-attack on stealth-skills work independently from the out-of-stealth auto-attack, that would be great.
....and have the stealth-skills auto-attack when in stealth when it auto-attack is set on.

any other thief that play with main-hand pistol with the "Hidden Thief" in PvP, do you just turn auto-attack off?

edit: strangely enough, main-hand dagger doesn't face this problem, but every other weapon does.

Edited by Symbiont, 08 November 2012 - 02:30 PM.

[ArcherHenchman]

Any player of respectable skill level, especially a thief, will remove autoattack from his weapons. You can be tossed out of shadow refuge on any class, down an engineer who's sitting in his own elixir r, burn venoms, proc burn/might off guard blocks, etc.

Even backstab shouldn't be on auto, because stealing into a person, then stabbing him in the face, rather than ass, is a huge chunk of damage lost. Control your attacks. Always.

[Symbiont]

ArcherHenchman, on 08 November 2012 - 06:10 PM, said:

Any player of respectable skill level, especially a thief, will remove autoattack from his weapons. You can be tossed out of shadow refuge on any class, down an engineer who's sitting in his own elixir r, burn venoms, proc burn/might off guard blocks, etc.

Even backstab shouldn't be on auto, because stealing into a person, then stabbing him in the face, rather than ass, is a huge chunk of damage lost. Control your attacks. Always.

Any player of respectable skill level should know that backstab on auto-attack, actually doesn't auto-attack. (if we gonna talk like elite-wannabe's)

Edited by Symbiont, 08 November 2012 - 07:28 PM.

[ArcherHenchman]

And this justifies keeping auto on for what reason, exactly?

[Symbiont]

well how auto-attack works on main-hand dagger, which i think should be applied to other stealth skills, i really see no downside in it having it set on. i guess some players think there is skill involve spamming #1 manually.

Edited by Symbiont, 08 November 2012 - 09:54 PM.

[ArcherHenchman]

Skill or not, why would you want autoattack on? What functional reason do you have for wanting it there?

Given that the game's got a perfectly good option for you to solve your own problem, I fail to see why you'd offload a chance to get better to the developers when you've already done all the thinking required to progress your play.

[Symbiont]

i think having #1 automated helps to focus on other skills that needs more attention for reaction gameplay, that is one.
and two, spamming #1 is really not enjoyable to me.

i think having it automated is an advantage and i wish that advantage is equally over the range of weapons and not just on daggers.

anyhow, it's a broken mechanic that seem to have slipped from the developers attention.

Edited by Symbiont, 08 November 2012 - 10:23 PM.

[Invoky]

A broken mechanic is a broken mechanic, I failed to see how you are trying to justify that is the fault of using auto attack.

[ArcherHenchman]

The mechanic isn't broken at all.  Both ranged steal stealths are normally broken by the unit of damage which comes from the attack which is in flight during the steal. If you activate steal mid attack in melee range on a dagger primary, you will unstealth due to the damage of the attack which you're currently in the midst of using.

The issue isn't with your mechanics, its with you autoattacking during your lead in to stealth. You don't notice it on effects like Hide in shadows and CnD because both of those have long animations. The same isn't true for the instantcast steal.

There is no functional difference. The mechanic isn't broken. ITS THE PLAYER.

If you want to test this out, go into the mists and look at your projectiles in flight when you steal. You can make it very obvious by buffering steal at the end of clusterbomb.

Edit: the reason you're not seeing this happen with the dagger is because you're stealing from range where your autoattack can't be activated due to the fact that dagger is melee. Check sword, you'll see the same thing.

Edited by ArcherHenchman, 08 November 2012 - 11:21 PM.

[Symbiont]

tested it. and sadly mid cast interrupts stealth, although able to steal an item. i won't be using auto-attack any more. at least not with range weapons on a thief.

edit: on second thought, casting steal right after the casting bar hit 100% it won't break stealth. good to have this figured out.

Edited by Symbiont, 09 November 2012 - 12:18 AM.

[Shinimas]

Symbiont, on 08 November 2012 - 09:51 PM, said:

well how auto-attack works on main-hand dagger, which i think should be applied to other stealth skills, i really see no downside in it having it set on. i guess some players think there is skill involve spamming #1 manually.

The poster above just told you why that's a bad idea. Hell, your own thread contains one reason. Logic, man, use it.

[Symbiont]

Shinimas, on 09 November 2012 - 10:21 AM, said:

The poster above just told you why that's a bad idea. Hell, your own thread contains one reason. Logic, man, use it.

well it's illogical how every other stealth skill stops auto-attack, except the steal-stealth skill. i stand by it that it is a broken mechanic.

Edited by Symbiont, 09 November 2012 - 03:04 PM.

[Dairuiner]

Symbiont, on 09 November 2012 - 03:04 PM, said:

well it's illogical how every other stealth skill stops auto-attack, except the steal-stealth skill. i stand by it that it is a broken mechanic.

It's actually functioning correctly.. what you're failing to account for is the fact that the pistol #1 ability is actually a brief channel (unlike the melee #1's. You can tell this because there is a casting bar.)  Casting steal does not interrupt the channel, so when it completes it will still fire the shot.  It's the same mechanic that allows you to pre-cast c/d or pistol whip before a steal.  The reason you only notice it on the steal-stealth skill is because that's the only stealth we have that doesn't have its own channel (besides black powder, which does interrupt channels.). And the steal-stealth actually DOES stop your autoattack (i.e. you will not start another autoattack after the steal), it just doesn't stop any current abilities that are channeling.

Can't have your cake and eat it too... either steal interrupts channels or it doesn't. If it does interrupt, we stand to lose a LOT more.  I agree this makes the stealth-steal ability rather worthless to a pistol build, in which case the focus should be on possibly getting Anet to remove the channel from the pistol #1. Not likely, but there it is.

EDIT: Pro tip: Bind a key to the "stow/draw weapons" command.  It will interrupt channels.  Hit this keybind before you steal and you should be ok. No need to disable autoattack. This is a very good key to have for all the reasons an above poster mentioned about certain times you want to stop attacking, and/or for cancelling a channeled ability before it fires in order to save the initiative/cooldown.

Edited by Dairuiner, 09 November 2012 - 05:09 PM.

[Reikou]

ArcherHenchman, on 08 November 2012 - 06:10 PM, said:

Any player of respectable skill level, especially a thief, will remove autoattack from his weapons. You can be tossed out of shadow refuge on any class, down an engineer who's sitting in his own elixir r, burn venoms, proc burn/might off guard blocks, etc.

Even backstab shouldn't be on auto, because stealing into a person, then stabbing him in the face, rather than ass, is a huge chunk of damage lost. Control your attacks. Always.

actually... if you look at streams of any of the top players in the world at the moment, all of them have auto-attack on...

[Dairuiner]

Reikou, on 09 November 2012 - 05:09 PM, said:

actually... if you look at streams of any of the top players in the world at the moment, all of them have auto-attack on...

Agree, like I said above it's overkill to disable autoattack.  Just bind a "stow/draw weapons" key to cancel your autoattack and interrupt channels. Way better than having to spam your #1 keybind all day long.

Edited by Dairuiner, 09 November 2012 - 05:28 PM.

[Takato]

I see no problem with auto attack being on at all.

In this situation, I would auto attack normally and sheath my weapon to cancel the auto attack ( if you press it once it won't actually sheath the weapon just cancel the auto attack ) and then proceed to steal/whatever.

I find it ignorant of people saying that any "respectable" thief would remove auto attack ( especially good thieves apparently ).

Edited by Takato, 09 November 2012 - 05:30 PM.

[Dairuiner]

ArcherHenchman, on 08 November 2012 - 10:01 PM, said:

Skill or not, why would you want autoattack on? What functional reason do you have for wanting it there?

2 reasons (well, 2 sides of the same coin.)  Either you press "1" once each time you want to attack, in which case having autoattack makes the timing more optimal (zero delay between attacks), OR you spammy spam your 1 key to maximize the autoattacks, which is just sloppy play imo. This is not a spammy spam kind of game and you'd never spammy spam any of your other abilities.. why this one?

Edited by Dairuiner, 09 November 2012 - 05:34 PM.

[ArcherHenchman]

Reikou, on 09 November 2012 - 05:09 PM, said:

actually... if you look at streams of any of the top players in the world at the moment, all of them have auto-attack on...

All of them? Really? Because I just popped on and not a single player running thief had it on. Out of the 6 well known players on, not a single warrior or thief (or ele) had AA on. People running AA? Necros and guardians. Necros benefit from it during. One of the guardians who switched to his thief had AA on with his guard and AA off with his thief.

Since attacks buffer, you don't lose any time between attacks if you control your attacks. There's ALWAYS zero delay between attacks.

Thieves haven't been putting anything in shadow arts in competitive play for a few weeks, which means that people are being forced to buffer C&D to get a stealth off. Are probably going to change on the 15th, so getting this down will become more valuable pretty soon.