Guild Wars 2

As it stands, Thieves have 3 main mechanics (Stealth is a heavy influence, but not a specific Thief mechanic, so it is excluded here):

- Initiative: the system that attempts to influence reactionary weapon skill usage and elaborate combos. While flawed, I do like it.

- Dual skills: Hardly a mechanic, but it does exist. Incredibly overhyped to be some sort of defining characteristic, when it just feels like any other weaponset for any other profession. The one skill that changes…really doesn’t feel like something incredible or unique.

- Steal. It is painfully obvious that it was thought up rather late in the development process (probably due to the rework of the class to separate it from Assassin after lore concerns).

As far as I’m concerned, the main mechanics of Thief are simply Steal and Initiative. Steal, however, is incredibly lacking, particularly in relation to how it integrates with the profession’s gameplay. It’s supplementary. Unlike Adrenaline, Attunements, Kits and others, it’s difficult to use Steal as a central mechanic to build around. Heavily traiting in to Steal doesn’t build your Thief to a state anywhere near as prominent as the aforementioned profession mechanics can.

Keep in mind that numbers are easily tweakable, certain traits are purely conceptual, and generally the whole thing is just a brainstorm with nothing concrete. I haven’t put it together over weeks of deep meta consideration. I have literally come up with everything on a whim. Undoubtedly, there will be kinks to iron out, probably many. Take the entire proposal with a grain of salt, and use it to expand with your own trains of thought on how to improve Steal as a profession mechanic.

I’ll do my best to cover everything. Here is my total overhaul of Steal.

Functionality (basic):

Steal comprises of four skill slots, F1-F4. F2-F4 are, by default, empty. These are ‘pockets’, where your Stolen skills will be stored until you change map or go down (not even defeated, just the Downed state). F1 remains as the “Steal” skill. However, “Steal” is now a Shadowstep in the same way that Infiltrator’s Strike is. When too far from a target, Steal will propel you further towards the target for the 900 units. It also now has a “Shadow Return” attached to it, which lasts for 10 seconds. This particular Shadow Return is strictly limited by distance (1200 units) and does not cure conditions, but does break stun. Attempting to return beyond 1200 units will pull you back for the distance, but you will not reach the origin.

Stealing from a target will place the Stolen skill in the F2 slot. Stealing again will place the next skill in F3, then F4. Using any Stolen skill shifts the pocket line-up to the right, and Stealing with full pockets will displace the F4 skill to make room in F2. Example: you have Skull Fear in F2, Ice Shard Stab in F3 and Whirling Axe in F4. You decide to use Whirling Axe. F3 becomes Skull Fear and F4 becomes Ice Shard Stab, leaving F2 open for the next skill. Your next Steal places Mace Head Crack in F2. You then use Skull Fear in F3, which results in Mace Head Crack moving to F3 to replace it, again leaving F2 open.

Functionality (Extended):

Steal (F1) is now on a 35 second cooldown. Where it differentiates is in the pockets. The pockets can NOT be spammed one after another. Using a pocket skill puts the others on an internal cooldown. This ICD differs depending on the skill that is used. For example, Consume Plasma results in a full 30 second pocket cooldown, but Whirling Axe only cools down for 15 seconds. However, you can still Steal using F1 to fill your pockets in the mean-time.

In both PvE and PvP, all mobs and players have an icon that only the Thief can see – this icon is labelled “Intuition”. Hovering over this icon displays the possible skills that the Thief can Steal from the target, in a menu that looks similar to chain skills. This enables new players to see what Steal is capable of at lower levels, where they won’t have seen the skills before.

Traits:

Deadly Arts:

Mug – Leech health when Stealing. (This damages the target and heals the player for the exact amount that it would have hit for normally, non-crit, ergo, affected by Power and not Healing). Does not leech life from objects, but still damages.

Improvisation – Stolen skills have a 10% chance to be instantly recharged for a second use (other Stolen skills will still go on cooldown). Deal 3% more damage for each full pocket.

Trickery:

Long Reach and Trickster – traits swapped.

Steal Recharge Rate – Increased from 1% per point to 2% per point. Maximum reduction (30 Trickery) results in Steal having a cooldown of 14 seconds.

Long Reach – Stealing reaches further (1200) and uses ground targeting to affect the nearest two foes:
*Fury, Might, Swiftness and Vigor from traits only apply once. Stolen boons and leeched life can apply for two foes, however.
*If both foes have the same boon, and you steal it twice, the duration and/or intensity will stack
*When stealing from two foes, the closest will give their pocket skill in F2 first, followed by shifting to F3 for the F2 pocket from the second foe.

Sleight of Hand – Stealing dazes the target (1/2s). Pocket skills recharge 33% faster.

I have yet to come up with anything else in relation to the other traits that use Steal in some way, but they seem alright to me.

Any comments are welcome. After all, this is a quick brainstorm. If you find something wrong (and you probably will), you can either use this entire thread as a brainstorm for yourself on how you would improve Steal and make it stand out as a true profession mechanic, or simply help expand upon this one. One thing to bring up would be the stolen PvP skills and how the new system would affect the balancing act on what the skills are capable of there, and how to handle that.

If anything, take this proposal on a conceptual level, and ignore the numbers if there’s something fundamentally wrong with them.

Thanks for reading.

interesting. when i first began playing my thief, i didn’t use steal at all — i saw it as useless and a waste of time. then, i sat down with guildhead.com and built myself a build that suits my playstyle, and in reading over the traits, i found that i could trait for the ability to buff myself and allies on stealing … i could rebuild initiative on stealing … both most useful.

THEN i started training myself to use it as a part of my cycle, and found it to be the perfect accompaniment to my thief’s abilities.

if there were any one thing i’d like changed, it’s this:

when my thief steals from a melee target “based” on, say, an elementalist. an ele has no stealth ability. however, she ends up stealthed. i would love to see her steal abilities match those associated with her target, rather than be a random ability coming from an overall list of possible abilities.

intresting idea, however i dont think the skills you avhe already stored in your pockets as you call them should swap places just bcasue you use one, let them stick to the slot they got put in at first, and then just fill up the lowest numbered pocket when you steal something (so if you have something in F3 but not F2 and F4, and you us steal it would fill up first f2 and then f4 if you steal another time before using one of the pocket skills).

Also i do NOT think that stun breaks and shadow return should be a basic function of Steal, would just make it too easy for those lol backstab glass canons to get away again if they fail it without having to sacrifice their insane dmg (you could however put it in a traits somewhere, but could have to be at least 20pt, likely 30 pt needed in a traitline)

when my thief steals from a melee target “based” on, say, an elementalist. an ele has no stealth ability. however, she ends up stealthed. i would love to see her steal abilities match those associated with her target, rather than be a random ability coming from an overall list of possible abilities.

The skills you steal does depend on what you are stealing from…

I rly like it. But 14s cooldown would be to strong.

Anyway the change from 1% to 2% recharge rate for each traitpoint would result in a 21s cooldown (35 / 1.6 = 21)

I would change the base cooldown to 30s and change
“increase recharge rate by 1% for each traitpoint”: 30s / (1 + [traitpoints / 100])
to
“reduce the cooldown of steal by 1% for each traitpoint”: 30s * ( 1 – [taitpoints / 100])

With the 30s base cd you could get it down to 21s.

And change the 1/2s daze of Sleight of Hand to 1/4s daze or 1s immobilize for better balance.
I’d prefer the 1/4s daze over the 1s immobilize.

1/4s daze every 21 seconds is still strong.

Everything else should be minor number tweaks