Guild Wars 2

So after playing Thief for a LONG, LONG time, I’ve come up with a few ideas on how to make the Thief a more desirable component in a team aside from weakness application (shortbow), DPS and stealth ressing. There needs to be more…synergy with the rest of the team. It seems that if a Thief wants to support his/her team, they have to go out of their way a lot more to do so than other professions. It seems that the profession is naturally selfish aside from venomshares and the mediocre regen. A big problem is that the big benefits aside from venom come from stealthing allies. If you’re not using Smoke Screen + SB combo or using BP or SR constantly, there is no surefire way to get your support across aside from 2 or 3 utilities with sizeable cooldowns. So, here are my thoughts on what to change:

Venoms:

Venomous Aura: Increase active radius to 600, and change to an actual aura and not an instant application. Upon using a venom, the aura remains around the Thief for 5 seconds, and any ally that walks in to the aura during this time receives the venom and charges. Each ally that receives the venom then has their own aura that lasts for an extra 5 seconds. The application cap remains at five, however.

All venoms: Reduce cooldowns across the board to 40 seconds instead of 45 in PvE. When traited in to venoms, the venoms can be applied across a team every 32 seconds, a fantastic addition to utility when considering the large applications of weakness, vulnerability and the like.

Skale Venom: Increase vulnerability stacks per attack to 3.

Stealth:

Shadow Protector: When you go in to stealth, nearby allies gain regeneration for 5 seconds. This is instead of having to stealth the actual allies.

Shadow’s Embrace: Remove conditions from yourself and adjacent allies every 3 seconds while in stealth.

Hidden Assassin: Gain might for you and nearby allies when you go in to stealth (still at 2 stacks per).

Shadow’s Rejuvenation: Regenerate health while in stealth. Adjacent allies will also receive this effect.

Trickery:

Bountiful Theft: Fundamentals remain the same – HOWEVER, if any boon has been stacked, namely Might, then all of those stacks will be taken instead of just one.

Steal Recharge Rate: Increase to 2% per point instead of 1%.

You have some good ideas here. Though I am saddened by the fact that mesmers have far more useful stealthing tools in WvW than thieves do. This seems like a crime to me.

Nice to see ideas coming out to make thieves more desirable in groups and not another “make us able to 2 shot better” post.
I liked a lot of points made here, lets hope this gets some attention.

Auesis.7301:

So after playing Thief for a LONG, LONG time, I’ve come up with a few ideas on how to make the Thief a more desirable component in a team aside from weakness application (shortbow), DPS and stealth ressing. There needs to be more…synergy with the rest of the team. It seems that if a Thief wants to support his/her team, they have to go out of their way a lot more to do so than other professions. It seems that the profession is naturally selfish aside from venomshares and the mediocre regen. A big problem is that the big benefits aside from venom come from stealthing allies. If you’re not using Smoke Screen + SB combo or using BP or SR constantly, there is no surefire way to get your support across aside from 2 or 3 utilities with sizeable cooldowns. So, here are my thoughts on what to change:

Venoms:

Venomous Aura: Increase active radius to 600, and change to an actual aura and not an instant application. Upon using a venom, the aura remains around the Thief for 5 seconds, and any ally that walks in to the aura during this time receives the venom and charges. Each ally that receives the venom then has their own aura that lasts for an extra 5 seconds. The application cap remains at five, however.

All venoms: Reduce cooldowns across the board to 40 seconds instead of 45 in PvE. When traited in to venoms, the venoms can be applied across a team every 32 seconds, a fantastic addition to utility when considering the large applications of weakness, vulnerability and the like.

Skale Venom: Increase vulnerability stacks per attack to 3.

Stealth:

Shadow Protector: When you go in to stealth, nearby allies gain regeneration for 5 seconds. This is instead of having to stealth the actual allies.

Shadow’s Embrace: Remove conditions from yourself and adjacent allies every 3 seconds while in stealth.

Hidden Assassin: Gain might for you and nearby allies when you go in to stealth (still at 2 stacks per).

Shadow’s Rejuvenation: Regenerate health while in stealth. Adjacent allies will also receive this effect.

Trickery:

Bountiful Theft: Fundamentals remain the same – HOWEVER, if any boon has been stacked, namely Might, then all of those stacks will be taken instead of just one.

Steal Recharge Rate: Increase to 2% per point instead of 1%.

I whole heartedly agree, thief support is futile. It needs reworking. However I see 1 thing you suggested that could be exploited and/or annoying.

Venom Aura: There is Devourer venom that immobilizes on hit, which has 2 strikes. Sharing that across the team is already insanely annoying in spvp, pve might just make perma-immobilize possible (since defiance stacks don’t block immobilize). Would be tricky to make this a fair venom.

Other than that, I like it. +1

(I would also hope they fixed traps for thieves, maybe make them more support as well since they serve just about no purpose atm (like needle trap and especially trip wire since it never works).

For example,
Shadow Trap: Set a trap. The first enemy to trigger this trap activates a smoke bomb that blinds the area around it (npc smoke bomb size). Activate skill in next 3 seconds to teleport to this smoke and become stealthed for 5 seconds. Combo Field: Smoke.

Trip Wire-Change to Wire Bound: Set a trap. The first enemy to trigger this trap gets caught on a wire that only permits them to move in a certain radius from the point of contact(of the wire). Technically would apply immobilize but only within a small circle.

Needle Trap: Set a trap. The first enemy to trigger this trap springs a needle trap that applies poison and cripple initially, then poison and weaken to any foe after that. Trap stays for 4 seconds.

I did think about that, but I think there are ways of preventing such exploitation, for example, Devourer Venom only sharing one charge, or having the immobilise duration refresh instead of stack on a mob-by-mob basis.

My next post was actually going to be about traps, I’ll chuck in what I thought of here, too:

All Traps:

Instead of being triggered upon hit and then dissipating, Thief traps are now static objects placed on the ground and unseen by hostile targets. Each one will have its own set of charges.

Needle Trap:

- One charge, affects a 300 diameter (not radius) when triggered and becomes an invisible AoE circle for 3 seconds. Foes that step in this circle receive the trap effect, and the target that triggered the trap is the centre of the circle.

Tripwire:

-Three charges, same effect radius/length as it is now. Cripple effect removed. A foe that walks across the trap a second time has an internal cooldown of 5 seconds before they can trigger it again (3 second knockdown with no stunbreak, 2 seconds to spare)
-The third foe breaks the wire and becomes “Snagged”. After moving 300 units away from the trap, they are pulled back to the trap and adjacent foes are crippled by the lashing wire for 5 seconds.
- The pull/lash can be activated prematurely on the last affected target, as the first knockdown will chain the skill to “Snap Wire”.

sPvP Version:

- One charge
- Knockdown, snag, pull and cripple all operate on that one charge and affect only the target.
- Cooldown increased to 60 seconds.

Shadow Trap:

- One charge (obviously)
- Upon triggering, a loud smoke bomb explodes, blinding and weakening adjacent foes for 5 seconds.
- Shadow Pursuit is instant cast.
- Shadow Pursuit breaks stun.

Ambush:

- Cooldown increased to 45 seconds
- One charge (obviously)
- The spawned Thief now behaves identical to Veteran Scouts in WvW, but with the same HP, armor and damage output as before (I believe the dual dagger version did more damage so we’ll use that as a template).
- Upon triggering the thief, Ambush chains to “Tag Team”, an instant cast stun-break skill.
- Tag Team swaps your position and the spawned Thief’s position via shadowstep.

Deadly Arts:

Corrosive Traps: Vulnerability duration increased to 10s.

Improvisation: Changed to “Well-Prepared”. Increases damage dealt by 5% for every unique active trap effect (lingering poisons, immobilisation, cripples, knockdowns, Shadow Pursuit marks, blinds, weakens and active Ambush Thieves), including damage dealt by summoned Thieves. Reduces Trap skill cooldowns by 20%.

Acrobatics:

Master Trapper: Endurance regeneration increased by 50% while traps are active, untriggered or triggered.

I would rather see hand crossbow than small bow when it comes to the Thiefs. Looks more Thiefy and sneaky then wearing a bow like a ranger or something.

Kisaki.7308:

I would rather see hand crossbow than small bow when it comes to the Thiefs. Looks more Thiefy and sneaky then wearing a bow like a ranger or something.

This thread is about giving thieves more support abilities, where does a 1h xbow come in? lol

OMG a thief thread that doesn’t scream nerf stealth LOL props to the OP like your idea’s

the problem i see with this is groups of thieves abusing it in wvw…

Battou.7832:

You have some good ideas here. Though I am saddened by the fact that mesmers have far more useful stealthing tools in WvW than thieves do. This seems like a crime to me.

lol… how so?
veil?/mass invisibility? each on 90 sec cd and not instant (mass invisibility is stupidly obvious and easily interruptable)
blinding powder/shadow refuge outclass them

- as well as thieves having access to smoke fields and cluster bomb

I like thief in pvp/wvw however he indeed seems to lack in dungeons besides the obvious things (ppl like my stealth in dredge fractal for example). Mostly you’ll just be avoided for some dungeons due to the massive power most bring and little durability.

As I like pvp en wvw, I end up just running a nuke build and staying out of large aoe/zergs. So power/crit/crit damage are my gear and allthough I do have some toughness from traits Im just mostly full power.

However I still got some traits that blind on stealth, and ofcourse normal dodging will easily give more survivability. Due to a lot of thiefs not caring for pve (hell why do u take a thief if not for pvp mostly) and lots of thiefs probably failing to stay alive or at least standing in pve for more than 70% of the time U wont get asked all that much by pugs.

Some better support could come in handy so that the pve sided players will perhaps get a look at the better pve thiefs, and dont go all raging about not wanting thiefs because they die to fast (which is nonsense if you play it right). If thiefs can bring more I hope they get asked more rather than the regular zerk warriors/guardians/mesmers or elementalists getting asked

You never see: LF Thief to go dungeon X

Would love to be able to run more trait builds, even though it might ruin the whole being unique thing, it will help every class being able to fill each roll without having to pay everytime to reset traits. 1 support sheet build, 1 dps build, 1 control build.
Or for that matter a PVE & PVP build.

Is it not enough utility that they can go invincible and kill any mob in 2 seconds? not literally but you know…

I would love to see all classes having a viable way to support and/or tank as well as just dps.

miniL.7361:

However I still got some traits that blind on stealth, and ofcourse normal dodging will easily give more survivability. Due to a lot of thiefs not caring for pve (hell why do u take a thief if not for pvp mostly) and lots of thiefs probably failing to stay alive or at least standing in pve for more than 70% of the time U wont get asked all that much by pugs.

You never see: LF Thief to go dungeon X

I made thief my first charc since prelaunch day 1, only pve for a long time. They are useful outside of stealth (such as high mobility needed in certain dungeon events and just taking target X down b4 it wipes everyone).

I often lfg on my thief. A better support option would be nice though, even on my perma-evasion build while tossing combo fields down, it just isn’t team friendly atm.

And tom, that is the point. Not asking for dps buff, asking for support buff. Not sure you read any posts.

tom.7468:

Is it not enough utility that they can go invincible and kill any mob in 2 seconds? not literally but you know…

we asking for more SUPPORT, and well as support stealth kinda got nerfed resently not even resetting aggro anymore.

Beside i like to see you kill a silver mob in a dungeon in less than a few minutes…

These idea’s would make my current support build insanely good. I wonder if there’s such a thing as too much support.