Guild Wars 2

I’m not sure if this would merit a totally new profession, or just a lot of tweaking to the current ones.

Anyway, here’s my suggestion:

I really like the acrobatic and quick combat of the Thief, but I don’t like the theme of the skills and the lore behind the character. Many of the Thief skills don’t rely on quick movement or evasiveness, but rather rely on stealth and trickery. The profession I would play in an instant has the quick and acrobatic style of the Thief, but is not based around stealth, but rather around evasion. A swashbuckler, someone who is fighting toe-to-toe with someone, but is agile and is never in one place for too long, someone who is always on the move. A blade-dancer.

This could be achieved with a Thief by allowing an off-hand sword, but the utilities and elites just don’t add that extra flair that a swashbuckler would possess.

Example skills:

1) Fine the way it is, but it could have multiple attacks in each part of the chain, whilst doing less damage per hit, it would add up to about the same.

2) Rather than just appearing at the enemies location, make the move more of a leaping attack. Not really very Thief-ish, but it’s what I would imagine a swashbuckler doing.

3) The character leaps over the enemy, slashing down with both swords, and lands behind them.

4) The character slashes at the enemy’s legs, crippling them, and evades backwards.

5) The character impales the target, and leaves the sword in their chest, dealing damage over time (based on power, not condition damage, sort of like the Guardian GS number 5), and then the same button can be hit to forcefully rip the sword out of the target, dealing extra damage and stunning the target for 2 seconds or so.

The main idea I would like, is to maintain the quick gameplay of the Thief, thanks to Initiative, but have a lighter tone to the skill-set. I’m not sure if this would be doable with the Thief we already have, or if a new profession would have to be made, but there’s my two cents. :P

Well here is the thing I love what you have purposed here.

BUT

Your out look on a thief is only but one. From reading your post and seeing some of the names you have throwing around
(Swashbuckler, Blade Dancer) I am betting your a D&D player, I may be worng but this is the premise I am working off here.

Even in D&D there are stealthy rouges or thieves, then there are up in your face rouges and thieves, then there is the Political and social thieve that does no fighting and destroys his enemies from a political point.

Like I said I like it ( what you posted ) just keep in mind there are many variations of Thieves/ Rouges and Arena net happen to choose the stealthy ones

Haha, I’ve never touched DnD. :P I just imagine that as the kind of person I would have fun playing as. Used some fancy other names to describe it. xD

The melee Ranger is currently pretty much what you want.
Sword especially has what you’re looking for with the autoattack being a swipe-kick-leap chain.
Even the greatsword has an attack+attack+evasiveattack chain.

(2) and (4) are Ranger sword (2) which is an attack huge leap backwards and a huge leap forwards+attack+cripple. All while evading due to agility and not stealthmagic.

(3) is Ranger sword (3) which is an agile leap behind the enemy. Poison is involved. All while evading due to agility again.

(4) is also Ranger Dagger (4) which is an attack+poison+evade.

Ranger also has a utility skill Lightning Reflexes where you dodge backwards and dead damage.

(5) is essentially the Warrior Sword (4) where you impale your enemy for bleeding on hit, and can use (4) again to rip the sword out for extra damage.

Yup add 2 additional jump/tumble utility skills to the melee ranger and you would have something good there. (ranger utility skills are pretty bland anyway)

Maybe add it as an alternative primary, I hear there a number of rangers that would prefer not to have their pet on the field and as a swashbuckler any pet that is not a hilarious enemy taunting parrot is not a good pet.