Guild Wars 2

Howdy! Now, when I first saw the Thief, I imagined I’d be able to make a swashbuckler kind of guy, and it’s pretty darn close! I just think it’d be even better if Thieves could use two swords though. That would be the piece de resistance. :P

Anywhoo, I’ve come up with some sample skills that you could use with an offhand sword.

Dual sword: Helmsplitter – Vault over your foe in an evasive somersault, and strike down on the enemy’s head before landing behind them. Leap finisher.(Applies vuln.) (5 ini.) (1/4s evade)

Pistol + Sword: Infiltrator’s Shot – Shadowstep to your foe, and blast them with your pistol, sending them flying. (300 knockback or so) (6 ini.) This is not a launch, it is a push / knockback, like Ranger LB 4, or Engineer FT 3.

Dagger + Sword: Evasive Maneuvers – Stab your foe with your dagger, and leap backwards. Becomes Infiltrator’s Leap, enabling you to jump back into the fight with a shadowstep sort of thing. Leap Finisher. (3 ini. + 2 ini.)

Sword 4: Arcing Blade – Throw your sword at your foe for heavy damage (similar to Dancing Dagger, but only one target, with higher damage). Physical Projectile finisher.(4 ini.) (Applies bleeding)

Sword 5: Disarm – Strike the target’s wrists, and cause them to fumble their weapons. Applies a 2s daze, followed by 5s of Weakness. (5 ini.)

I think it’d be cool to have dual swords on a Thief, it’d make me happy, haha. xD Anywhoo, let me know what you think, and upvote it a lot if it’s something that should be looked at!

A shameless bump, but really, no comments or concerns or angry sentiments? Shocking, for this forum. xD

The problem with these skills is that they really don’t give anything new. It just seems they are there for the sake of having an OH sword. Neither of the OH skills are really interesting or unique. Still, I’d love to see an OH sword at some point!

I’d also like to point out that Infiltrator’s Shot sounds scarily OP – knockbacks have sizeable cooldowns and low abundance for a reason.

Check my thread also – https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Thief-Off-hand-Sword-Ideas/first#post1741931

Well, what is a sword but a big dagger? :P You don’t have to have super unique skills, it’s just a heavier counterpart to the dagger. The skills I came up with are focused more on fighting toe-to-toe, rather than hiding in stealth. Dagger is more of a stealth-based weapon, with heavy damage from it. Sword is more of a mobility weapon, with heavy damage from just normal fighting.

I realize that the Sword + Pistol skill might be a bit OP, but that’s why it costs 6 initiative. You could only use it twice before running out of intitiative, which takes a good while to recharge. The Engineer skill knocks back further, and is available every 15 seconds or so. :P Engineers have several knockbacks, actually.

In that case, some questions I would bring up:

1) How does a Thief gain benefit from OH sword in these skillsets? S/P serves a face-to-face combat style well enough, and it has more utility to boot. All of the implied S/S skillset here simply applies direct damage and moves the player around, and a dual skill that simply applies some vulnerability doesn’t seem worth the effort. I know I’d never use it.

On top of that, a simple damaging projectile with no other purpose seems pointless when you have a gap closer on the next button. If you check my off-hand skills, you’ll see that they serve purposes – #4 being a defensive skill that both protects from immediate damage and reduces further incoming damage temporarily, and #5 provides short slows to approaching enemies and grants an escape mechanism with extra attached utility. They deal damage, but they are capable of serving a role aside from that. Within the skills I suggest, S/S becomes a stealth-less mobile damage dealer with defensive utilities that go beyond dodging, like reflection of projectiles and parrying – providing something unique to a Thief weaponset. D/S becomes a variant in that it doesn’t rely so much on staying power and mobility within battle, but on being slippery and landing spike damage at key moments, sustaining itself with endurance and evasion. Couple that with the auto-attack granting poisons to reduce healing etc. and you have a capable attrition fighter rather than a full-on duelist. P/S remains reliant on dealing damage at range, but with options to apply differing methods of condition damage while also being able to stand its ground and escape danger up close. Instead of P/D (bleeds and stealth only), it utilises bleeds and burns and becomes mobile instead of sneaky.

I think this is the problem I have with your skills – it’s fine to just have a heavier dagger, but it has to serve some sort of role aside from just damage, or it’s a totally arbitrary addition. It would be like adding a greatsword for Elementalists but then just giving it some variations of Staff skills. People would question what the point of it was.

2) What makes it worth swapping to for a Pistol user? Both #4 and #5 are variations of dagger skills, so D/S would give you two gap closers and a powerful projectile attack (which could be EXTREMELY over-the-top considering the ridiculous spike damage you can obtain) and P/S would give you two gap closers when Pistol MH is meant to be a distance weapon that utilises condition damage and not direct damage. Only S/S and D/S seem like they fit the swashbuckler criteria you’re going for (D/S going too far in that direction to the point of being OP, I think), as P/S has the same problem as P/P in that the skills are conflicting with each other, because they have different combat philosophies.

3) Breaking the trend and applying powerful CC abilities to initiative-based skills is a dangerous line to tread. There’s a reason that OH Pistol only gives a 1/4s Daze, and PW only gives a short stun, even giving a small delay before the next attacks. While other classes have no choice but to wait on their cooldowns (which are upwards of 15 seconds for powerful CC skills like knockbacks, and can only be lowered by 20% in traits), we have the ability to DRASTICALLY reduce our GCD by way of simply activating signets, taking initiative recovery traits like QR and more. It is simply too dangerous to make initiative skills more than situational and utilitarian. That’s why Heartseeker’s parameters were brought down rather quickly, and I still think it has too low of an initiative cost. Even at 6 initiative, having such a powerful skill is too much.

First off, I looked through the skills you proposed, and they’re just way too complex for a game like Guild Wars 2. You have to remember that we’re catering to a player who can’t tell up from down, or brown from blue. You have to keep the skillset simple enough to understand when you’re of that mentality, but with the ability to be amazing tools in the right hands. Your skills are far above the mentality that is the casual player.

Second, I did have other ideas, I was just thinking about them a bit more, haha. Although, these are just ideas, and they’re certainly not anywhere near actually being in the game. I’ve edited my original post to have some of those new skills, and I clarified a few things. :P

A lot of your skills add things like Weakness, or Cripple, which the auto-attack for a sword already does. If you’re using two swords, then you can have nearly limitless Cripple and Weakness on the target, which really defeats any kind of resistance they might be able to muster.

There’s nothing complex about the skills I propose. In fact, #4 is identical to Spear #3, only using one strike instead of a flurry and #5 provides the same functionality as Mesmer Sword #3 without the clone and different end condition. S/S #3 functions like a controllable DB, D/S #3 isn’t in any way difficult to understand and P/S is again similiar to Spear #3 with extra end product. I have no idea how any of these skills are difficult to understand. At all. If I had never played the game before I would still be able to understand their uses. Sorry if it sounds arrogant, but I really am struggling to understand how they are in any way inaccessible to new players. In fact I’d say the blocking skills are easier for new players to understand than any other skills in the game.

I took a look at some of the updated skills – some stuff I’d like to say:

1) P/S #3 still doesn’t answer the question of why it exists. It’s closing distance to then re-open it by a smidgeon for no discernible reason. Pistol MH is a ranged weapon, and this skill is juggling a closer and an opener needlessly. Surely just getting more distance or preventing the opponent coming closer would be the sensible option? And again, knockback for any initiative skill is too much. It’s simply not a balance option – it’s in a much higher acquirable abundance than any other profession’s skills. The only way you could justify it is if you are rooted during the knockback like PW roots you during the attack animation.

2) Why does #4 apply bleeding? That only synergises with Pistol MH, and coupled with #3, this just leaves P/S in a rather circus-like state. None of the other sets benefit from it at all.

3) #5 needs to be removed or reworked completely from the ground up. A 2 second daze for 5 initiative, even 6 initiative, is insane. Not even a Mesmer can come marginally close to that. Simply not an option. Even removing the Weakness and bumping the cost to 6 initiative would still leave the skill in such an overpowered state that you would see it everywhere in all PvP. Tactical Strike is strong enough as it is, and that requires stealth. Simply putting it on the skill bar is…scary.

To answer the Cripple/Weakness question – that’s the point. You might have missed the effect of #5, however – once the sword is thrown, you are unable to access the Cripple part again until you use the chain skill (Flashing Blades) or wait the 10-15 seconds it takes for the skill chain to expire (like Infiltrator’s Strike or any other Shadowstep skill). You actually have MORE access to Cripple with S/D, as you can throw Dancing Dagger all day for a 5 second cripple each time, and if you have two targets, that’s 10 seconds of Cripple per target for 4 initiative. /S doesn’t even come close in that regard. When you can get Weakness in such hilarious abundance from using D/ autoattack with at least 15 Deadly Arts, or just something like Elixir Gun (it’s the autoattack AND applies bleeds), that’s not even an issue. In fact, that establishes a role for S/S even more – positional/damage control by the immobilisation, cripples, weakens and shadowstep movement. It has a focus, something that sets like P/P lack. In comparison to Confusion Mesmers or any other number of damaging condition builds, it’s tame.

I recognise that these are all just ideas (and so are mine), of course. The key to these ideas is to have a solid ground, however.