Guild Wars 2

The fact, untraited steal is the most inefficent class skill of all classes.
Having a 35sec cd gapcloser with the Chance to missing the target> gain nothing > waiting 35 sec again>and maybe failing again.
And the fact of traiting, will not increase the effect of getting stolen skill when missing /blocking/blinding/evading.
I dont have to explain other classes class skills because compared to Thief Every other classes have simply more Options in using their untraited class skill abilities.

Suggestion:
Stealing an ability should not beeing affected by blocking/blinding/evading/immunitiy/missing.
You should getting rewarded with a stolen skills everytime for a steal.
>>>>Traits are not beeing affected by this Suggestion!<<<<

In order to improve steal ablility, you should get 3 different skills from 1 class:

F2 >1 dmg skill
F3 >1 CCskill
F4 >1 selfbuff skill

You can using theese skills at the end by 1 of the following 2 methods:

A) After using F1 steal (on cd) you will get F2-F4 skills and using them until you steal again. Stealing would automatically replace them all with new skills.
That prevents Player from “collecting” specific skills to be unfair playstyle, for example collecting 3x fear.

B) After using F1 steal (on cd) you will get 3 stolen skills placed on the bar above your initiative bar, theese are not separately activatable.
You have to use F1 to activate 1 skill and you will see the F2 skill will switching into F1 Slot. After using F2 skill , the next F3 skill will swap into F1 Slot and the same appears with the F4 skill.
At the end you will be rdy up for steal again after all of your skills are completely depleted and the cd on steal is ready up again.

I made a List of " new stolen skill " for every class beeing stolen from the Thief.
PLease excuse me, the Symbol of using stolen-Staff/stolen-scepter is similar, would be nice if anet would make different Icons

Edit: PLease excuse my average written english text. I hope the message getting across with this thread

The only thing I’d like to see changed about steal is it going in full cd if you don’t have anything targeted. It should go to kitten cd like when you try to use it on a target which is out of reach.
Everything else is fine imho. It’s a free, pseudo-stunbreaker (it saved my life in many occasions) and a teleport.

I disagree with the biggest part of your post. Stealing can fail, just as Warrior burst skills, mesmer f1-f3 skills and engi f1-f4 skills. It shouldn’t be unblockable by default.

Altho I believe it would be nice to have 3 items stolen, it will make things more intresting but only by making it possible to use just 1 and throw away the other 2.

Steal is a very strong skill in general , instant with a decent range , it can be your gap closer or escape tool, it can be an extra stealth or a full boon fest. If traitet it can do strong damage and heal, it can even steal boons and buff allies.

Steal is good.

hihey.1075:

The only thing I’d like to see changed about steal is it going in full cd if you don’t have anything targeted. It should go to kitten cd like when you try to use it on a target which is out of reach.
Everything else is fine imho. It’s a free, pseudo-stunbreaker (it saved my life in many occasions) and a teleport.

thats what a part of mine suggesting, stealing an ablility should always be successful and not be punshed by getting cd again if missed
traits are affected by enemies block/blind/evade …

@natsos.3692
plz read again, i think you missunderstood some parts
And again, this thread is not about traits.

I understood your post Arkantos but steal is still good untraited.
It doesn’t have to be something really outstanding because it is specific proffesion mechanic. It does what it does, and it’s good.

I do agree that it should not start a cooldown if the target is out of reach and instead teleport max range towards that direction and I agree that it needs more options than 1 item stolen(same as warriors more than 1 burst skill)but I disagree with the following:

<< Stealing an ability should not beeing affected by blocking/blinding/evading/immunitiy/missing.
You should getting rewarded with a stolen skills everytime for a steal. >>

Steal is a skill, if you avoid the skill it means you stole nothing so you can’t get a stolen skill if the enemy can block/evade you or if you are blinded. On the other hand giving a trait that makes Steal unblockable, that would be fair.

ok the one Thing is clear

but you rly think giving thiefs a new stealtrait, will solve thatproblem
we already have 8 average traits with steal and you cant invest that much Points to make steal more useable

…. now im talking about traits….

Arkantos.7460:

ok the one Thing is clear

but you rly think giving thiefs a new stealtrait, will solve thatproblem
we already have 8 average traits with steal and you cant invest that much Points to make steal more useable

…. now im talking about traits….

Regarding the traits, I’d move the 1500 range steal to Acrobatics, so that you could make a build totally centered on the Steal skill.

hihey.1075:

Arkantos.7460:

ok the one Thing is clear

but you rly think giving thiefs a new stealtrait, will solve thatproblem
we already have 8 average traits with steal and you cant invest that much Points to make steal more useable

…. now im talking about traits….

Regarding the traits, I’d move the 1500 range steal to Acrobatics, so that you could make a build totally centered on the Steal skill.

replaced or fused with what another trait in acrobatic?

Steal is fine, it has a lot of mobility and a lot of utility to go along with it.

hihey.1075:

The only thing I’d like to see changed about steal is it going in full cd if you don’t have anything targeted. It should go to kitten cd like when you try to use it on a target which is out of reach.
Everything else is fine imho. It’s a free, pseudo-stunbreaker (it saved my life in many occasions) and a teleport.

There aren’t range markers in this game, and Steal doesn’t produce some kind of circle that tells you whether or not you’ll be able to land the skill. This change would completely break the mechanic. Anyways, we already put Steal on CD if we don’t have a target in sight whatsoever. The 5s penalty for being out of range is quite enough.

While I don’t think Steal is bad, I truly feel it could be a bit better.

I believe Steal should rip a boon naturally. Then, slightly rework Bountiful Theft so it steals one boon and the boons stolen (still two total) this way are shared with your allies (along with Vigor, of course).

Or how about you gain a boon based on the class you stole from? Like Protection from Guardians and Stability from Warriors? Make each boon last an amount of time that’s fair for what they are. Only problem is that it could be bothersome to implement this for PvE with so many different kinds of mobs.

Maybe instead, in addition to the usual skill, you “steal” (read mimic) something characteristc of the target class that’s automatic, such as a Chaos Armor from Mesmers or Life Steal from Necromancers. But this would be even harder to implement. Besides, I may have gone too far on this last one.

Can we please talk about how Steal will lock itself if you go underwater with some land based skill in it (Healing Seed being a prime example)? You can’t even discard the item underwater, the whole skill is locked until you get out of the water and use the item.

I don’t know of any other profession that can’t use their class mechanic underwater. If a mesmer became unable to use Shatters underwater if they went into the water with some clones there’d be complaining left and right. Yet this has been an issue for more than a year already.

Please make it so that if you enter water with an unusable stolen skill it either becomes discarded automatically or it gets a suitable water-based alternative instead of locking the whole thing down.

I think it should be enough to add 2 small thinsg to steal:
1) Make it usable without a target (for mobility)
2) Buff the basic range to 1200.
I would even be happy if only 1 of the above become true.

Arganthium.5638:

Steal is fine, it has a lot of mobility and a lot of utility to go along with it.

hihey.1075:

The only thing I’d like to see changed about steal is it going in full cd if you don’t have anything targeted. It should go to kitten cd like when you try to use it on a target which is out of reach.
Everything else is fine imho. It’s a free, pseudo-stunbreaker (it saved my life in many occasions) and a teleport.

There aren’t range markers in this game, and Steal doesn’t produce some kind of circle that tells you whether or not you’ll be able to land the skill. This change would completely break the mechanic. Anyways, we already put Steal on CD if we don’t have a target in sight whatsoever. The 5s penalty for being out of range is quite enough.

There actually Are range markers in this game.

Agreeing with Arkantos in most points, but if u have all 3 with one steal its to much, if u can select between 3 opinions it might work. So thief gonna have more opinions to fight classes with high defense skills etc… But getting rewarded even if ur blinded or the target managed to dodge the steal u shouldnt get 3 items

Arganthium.5638:

Steal is fine, it has a lot of mobility and a lot of utility to go along with it.

hihey.1075:

The only thing I’d like to see changed about steal is it going in full cd if you don’t have anything targeted. It should go to kitten cd like when you try to use it on a target which is out of reach.
Everything else is fine imho. It’s a free, pseudo-stunbreaker (it saved my life in many occasions) and a teleport.

There aren’t range markers in this game, and Steal doesn’t produce some kind of circle that tells you whether or not you’ll be able to land the skill. This change would completely break the mechanic. Anyways, we already put Steal on CD if we don’t have a target in sight whatsoever. The 5s penalty for being out of range is quite enough.

There are range markers in this game.
Its a really small red bar below the skill icon that marks if you are in range or not.

Wish it was more visible, but it’s there.

SoulSin.5682:

Arganthium.5638:

Steal is fine, it has a lot of mobility and a lot of utility to go along with it.

hihey.1075:

The only thing I’d like to see changed about steal is it going in full cd if you don’t have anything targeted. It should go to kitten cd like when you try to use it on a target which is out of reach.
Everything else is fine imho. It’s a free, pseudo-stunbreaker (it saved my life in many occasions) and a teleport.

There aren’t range markers in this game, and Steal doesn’t produce some kind of circle that tells you whether or not you’ll be able to land the skill. This change would completely break the mechanic. Anyways, we already put Steal on CD if we don’t have a target in sight whatsoever. The 5s penalty for being out of range is quite enough.

There are range markers in this game.
Its a really small red bar below the skill icon that marks if you are in range or not.

Wish it was more visible, but it’s there.

Really? Hm. Well, guess all that time I spent making ranges intuitive is all for naught. :/

So referring back to hihey’s comment… If the range markers were made more visible and you still get boons/other side effects that you usually would get if you didn’t have a target, then I suppose it would be an acceptable nerf. I would however prefer that other classes get the same nerf to similar skills… Otherwise it would seem like another whack-a-mole nerf.

^
I don’t see any nerf in my suggestion.

Maybe it isn’t clear, but I’ll try to explain it with an example:
Say, you (thief) are fighting another thief.
During the fight, you decide to use your Steal ability on him. The moment you press F1 to trigger Steal, he goes into stealth (say, with Blinding Powder).
Your Steal will then go into full CD.

Whereas if you try to steal from an enemy outside of your reach, it will just go in a five seconds cooldown, with a message saying “Target is too far away” (or something of the likes).

What I am asking is to make the Steal ability go in kitten cooldown (or no cooldown at all) if you do not have an enemy targeted.

hihey.1075:

What I am asking is to make the Steal ability go in kitten cooldown (or no cooldown at all) if you do not have an enemy targeted.

Sorry, my critical reading skills seem to be lacking. -_-

Arganthium.5638:

Steal is fine, it has a lot of mobility and a lot of utility to go along with it.

so let me summarize, you wroted your build in another comment…
you think so a 10/x/x/x/30 build is needed to make steal fine, unfortunately I was talking about untraited skills but lets go ahead,
“a lot of mobility” is meaning more then 1, but 1 untraited shadowstep/steal is only 1 skill, other classes having “a lot more Options” in their class-skills as the Thief,
but you were meaning “a lot of Utility … with steal” , lets clear that up;
your using in 1 Steal:
Kleptomaniac
MUG
Thrill of Crime
Bountiful Theft
Sleight of Hand

Maybe 90% of all Thiefs using that combination of traits by underestimating one simple fact, you cant use all These traits by 100% against all classes in all situations.
So you were wasting everytime maybe more then 20% of used traits.
Inefficiently, taking your Chance away to beat the oppponent by investing 40 Traitpoints into average traits and also into average traitlines which doesnt do any good dmg just some weak Support/dmg/healing/cc and that with 20 sec cd on 1 skill which can easily be evaded/blinded/blocked/missed.

And for the saddest things of all, you only have 1 steal, that means 1 Option what to do … steal ….. or ….. not steal; that is 1 Option with your class skill, no less no more

I dont have to tell you the Options of all other classes by investing less traitpoints into their class skills compared to the THief one. Play them if you dont know, plz.

And because of all These Facts, I want to suggest more Options for the Thief here,
in this trait more Options with more stolen skills,
indeed the stolen one are affected by enemies boons/traits/yourconditions
but my Suggestion is about the 1 steal you were using to get These stolen skills.

And also because of the fact of his Initiative bar, which provides the burst/or should I say the ability to spam the same skills over and over again until your INit. is depleted
Anet will NEVER implent hard CC skills on These spammable skills but there is a Chance to get the good stuff on stolen skills , because of couldowns.
But only 1 stolen skill means 1 Option from 1 class and IM up for giving thiefs more then 1 Option.
Also, Anet could easily Change dmg/cc/Duration/boons/conditions/other stuff on stolen skills if thief would get more then 1 Option skill.

PS: sorry for my average englisch knowledge, I only want good intensions coming along with this thread for thiefs. After playing all other classes, it seems to be playing a thief in tpvp with high effort wont get high rewarded …..