Best stealth class ingame?

[old.LandShark]

Charonel, really... no offence here, but - Gah.
Your minstrel is an alt. How would you feel if you had specced to 50 mana and one in 2 DD's hit YOU instead of the enemy?
And if you had to press 5 buttons to cast it?
I just feel that minstrels are ROGUES. We have rogue hit points, rogue damage table (further hindered by str as only a tertiary attribute and low spec pts). And yet, we don't have any real rogue advantages. I use my stealth plenty, but if I had a realm point for every time a group with a shadowblade/nightshade in it had just made a beeline for me...
I dunno. I'd easily lose charm, AEmezz, cure mezz and healsong in exchange for 2x spec points and lower power/end cost on our DDs. And/or hunter charm, i.e. only blue con pets but once charmed its permanent and you can stealth with a pet charmed. Hunters - I'm not saying it gives you a huge advantage or anything, but its a lot more convenient than ours

 

[old.Charonel]

hehe landshark i said before that i didnt think they were much of an actual stealther anymore, and yes i think they should be made more "rogueish" too, but i just personally found that making a minstrel as a pure pet class was just one of the most enjoyable chars i've ever made

it's just a laugh getting the right pets and getting con buffed by them (you now have more hits than a minstrel should ), then getting chain healed mid fight while soloing (now you effectively have a LOT more hits than any solo minstrel should be able to even fantasize about ) and if/when the enemy tries to run you can just have the pet chain nuke them while you leisurely chase or CC etc... generally i like them because of the versatility, you can do all that and speed 5, mezz, confuse etc... on top of it all.

and my minstrel being an alt doesnt make using (ie working the interface) it any different than as a main btw , i had to use god only knows how many quickbars all at once, allways instrument shift etc.. too and yes its annoying, but does actually work if you practice using everything at once for a long enough time rather than just oversimplifying things and dumping out half your abilities (seen a lot of minstrels do this )

i'm not posting saying "ooo noo dont give mincers anything! they're fine already ffs" because like i said, i think they're pretty poor as a stealth (rogue) class, and that's the problem, that at the beginning they WERE a stealth class, and a good one too, then they get over nerfed and you get some mana eld player listing them as the best of the stealthable characters (most fun at any rate) not because of their skills as a stealther but because they can be made as an excellent PET class.

regardless of how good they are as a pet class i'd be monstrously pissed if i'd made mine as a stealther all that time ago , i do think minstrels need help, because they're at present not really stealthers (the only thing speccing stealth does is gimp your character, hardly a good sign of it being a stealther), they're an ace pet class, probably the best if used well with the right pet by someone's who willing to actually put the work into using one, but they SHOULD be a stealther class, not a pet class.

trouble is though, i find it hard to see how you can make them a viable stealth class without making them a sickeningly overpowered pet class, unless of course, you make their pet user aspect too worthless to focus on, meaning all the people who made them based on what they ARE (currently a pet class) and not what they should be, would get shafted just like the stealther mincers did. :/