Guild Wars 2

While I do enjoy Steal as it is now, there are problems with it:

1) It is extremely one-dimensional. In most situations, you will hit it either to close a gap, for the purpose of hitting F1 immediately afterwards to use whatever useful skill might result or for Mug, or for the boons you traited for, or a combination of these things. That’s it. This is hardly a mechanic that speaks of how unique and special the Thief profession is. It’s basically a lame, gimmicky bunch of utilities.

2) In its current state, it’s promoting the Mug -> C+D -> Backstab combos that most people dislike. While I feel that it is entirely possible to counter a glass Thief doing this combo, I feel that it isn’t right for the system to actively encourage that burst gameplay by the existence of Mug. There needs to be more flair than a straight-up burst mechanic.

3) It’s not substantial enough to be a profession mechanic. It just isn’t. Traiting to reduce the cooldown of the skill is almost pointless, the boon steals/shares don’t have any real synergy eg. no +boon duration and it’s overall fairly underwhelming in comparison to professions like Elementalist or Engineer, that feel extremely fleshed out such that they stand out as something in their own right.

So, what changes do I propose to Steal?

Firstly, the mechanic itself:

F1: Functions as normal, however, it is now a Shadowstep. It does not cure any conditions or break stun, but it has a Shadow Return mechanic that is active for 2 seconds after the Steal. This emphasises what a steal actually is: you don’t sprint up to a target, rip something from their hands and then stare at them. This gives the option of a more elusive stealing manoeuvre for players who choose to remain at range.

F2, F3 and F4: These are now “pockets”. When the Thief uses Steal, the stolen skill is placed in to F2, then F3 and then F4 if none are used during the Stealing process. These skills last until a map change or until you are downed. If you attempt to steal more than you can carry, the Thief will dump the F4 skill, and the skills will cycle across to accommodate the new stolen skill in F2.

Example: A Thief is facing two opponents. During the fight, he steals from both. F2 gives him a Fear skill, and F3 gives him a Chill skill. While cornered, he quickly pulls out and uses the Fear skill. The Chill skill then cycles back to F2, and a subsequent steal puts the next Fear skill in F3.

That basically outlines the actual mechanical change to Steal. Now the nitty gritty:

Secondly, the Stolen skills:

Giving such diversity to the Steal mechanic means that some of the Stolen skills are going to be immensely powerful such that they are not realistic in the new pocket setup. Thus, the individual skills will need to be toned down to compensate for the plethora of combinations and utility that Steal can now give. PvE skills can remain the same simply for the case of making the Thief’s unique mechanic useful in dungeon environments etc, but PvP equivalents need to be mixed up. Thus:

Mace Head Crack: This daze is reduced to 1s.

Whirling Axe: Now does not reflect projectiles.

Throw Gunk: Can remain the same.

Healing Seed: This removes conditions, plants a small Water field and gives a small heal as it used to, but now grants no regeneration.

Blinding Tuft: This now has no attached blind condition, and is renamed to “Illusory Tuft”, “Cloaking Tuft” or a similiar name. The applied Stealth lasts for 2 seconds instead of 3.

Ice Shard Stab: Chill reduced to 4 seconds.

Consume Plasma: Still grants Stability for 3 seconds and Retaliation for 5 seconds, but all other boons are also reduced to 5 seconds. Gain 3 Might stacks instead of 1.

Skull Fear: Instead of functioning identical to “Fear Me!”, it is a straight up 1 1/2s Fear from 0-600 range.

All PvE equivalent stolen skills can remain the same, or perhaps improved. I’m open for suggestions on those, too.

Finally, the Traits:

1) Mug: Instead of dealing damage, it applies venoms and other on-hit effects by default (as it would have done while dealing damage), but now applies Protection if the Thief does not use the Shadow Return. The Protection immediately activates, but Shadow Return will cancel the duration of it. At base, the Protection lasts 5 seconds. This means that you can still have Basilisk Venom for the purpose of a powerful burst while using the trait, but it’s not so over-the-top that it’s terrifying in WvW where +% crit damage is not capped.

2) Acrobatics and Trickery: +% Boon Duration and +Condition Damage are swapped in the trait trees. This leaves Trickery with +% Boon Duration and +% Steal Recharge Rate and Acrobatics with +Vitality and +Condition Damage. This gives the natural boons from Trickery more synergy.

3) Trickery: Currently gives +1% Steal Recharge Rate per point. This increases to +2% per point.

4) All other traits relating to Steal can remain the same.

And that basically does it. These are the ideas I’ve come up with in the past hour or so, and of course, they’re not anywhere close to perfect. Any suggestions or issues that you have found are most welcome. I just want to see the Thief become a truly unique and special profession that has that extra layer of depth that other professions seem to have.

Thanks for reading if you got this far!

There’s one thing I also want to point out, and that is that initiative is also a part of the Thief’s class mechanic. It’s not one-dimensional in the sense that Steal is all you have, it’s multifaceted in that Steal is only one part of it. Another special class-related value the Thief has is that your offhand skills change based on your main hand, giving access to more tailored skills for weapon sets. When you factor in initiative as a system and the adjusted offhand skills, you find that Steal and its interaction with them (and largely its shadow step functionality) serves as a glue for the class.

In my opinion, compared to, say, the Necromancer or the Warrior, the Thief has a pretty darned good class mechanic.

While I can agree with Initiative, I disagree with the dual skill. The off-hand skills are not adjusted, only skill #3 is, and in cases of dual-wielding the same weapon, it is quite obviously just the intended version of the extremely poor, temporary main-hand only skill. The associated traits eg. +5% dual skill crit chance or damage, are poor as well. There is hardly anything about dual-wield skills that would “wow” someone in to rolling a Thief. Most of the uniqueness will come from the Steal mechanic and from the Initiative system.

Steal as mechanic should be just improved ..

the current way of always having an eye on F1 is just terrible and non fluently…

The Steal mechanic for thieves would just work a thousands times much better, if it wouldn’t be a stupic f-button mechanic, but instead would be an class integrated trait mechanic of the thief based on a % chance when attacking an enemy in melee range.

Example:

Right now we have to take attention, that we press at the right moment F1, just to steal…

My version:

Steal is no F-Button feature anymore, instead Steal becomes an Auto Trigger mechanic, that happens based on % chance, when attacking enemies in melee range.
The thief trait line wouldn’t then reduce anymore the recharge time for steals, but instead it would increase the 5 chance for stealing and every enemy would receive a limitation on how many times thiefs can steal on them…

Sub Example:

With stealing not beign traited, Thiefs would have a base chance for stealing of 10% when in melee range attacking something (playing with dagger or sword)
Instead of the old F1 being for Steal, the new F1 should be for thiefs having a REAL Stealth Mode gameplay which should be activable with F1, where thiefs can choose out of a list of x different stealth skills 1, that they want to use once for the moment….

A stealing traited thief to the maximum for example owuld have then a base chance of 40% stealing automatically something, when attacking in melee range.

F2-F4 are then the slots for stolen items which are carriable for unendless time, until the player uses them.. so that a thief could combine up to 3 stolen items to use them up in a row so that you also know, that once your F4 has an item in place, that the same target won’t have any items anymore, that you can steal from that enemy, so you’ve to change your target, if you want to steal something new… after using at least one of the last 3 stolen items…

that would be a real good improvement to the thief class making stealing and stealth more integrated in the general gameplay of the class making it feel more, that these two things are of great impact and meaning for this class due to their deeply integrated gameplay systems that are actively alwyys there to be used and not something, that is just only passively there and either waits on activation (by pressing F1) or triggers only passively by using either weapon based skills or utility skills…

With a stealth mode, some senseless utitlity skilsl could get replaced with somethign better… and if not as stealth mode, then instead as venom splasher mode, to get a better integrated feeling of theifs being the masters of deadly poisons as active integrated gameplay and not as some crap, thats only in the game based on utility skills…, whereas most of them, especially the elite poison is totally underpowered and useless…

Your ideas sound interesting and would make steal a more viable skill.

I would like to add a suggestion for story mode.
I want SM missions where I really get to steal items for NPC’s. (thief for hire)

steal isnt thiefs only class mechanic… it also has initiative/dual skills, for that reason i dont think stealth needs reworking – especially through the addition of more f’x’ spots)