Guild Wars 2

I felt that this warranted its own thread in the Suggestions section. Basically, since we have such a low pool of weapons to choose from, and there is literally no reason to have no off-hand, I thought I’d give some placeholder skills as to what Dagger/Light, Pistol/Light and Sword/Light could be.

I would like 5 unique skills that emphasise finesse and acrobatic skill eg. a lot of evasive dagger techniques or fanciful gunplay. The #3 skill is a crummy version of the dual wield #3 skill too, so that should be changed.

Examples:

Unarmed with Dagger in mainhand:

#3: Weave – 5 Initiative
Evade attacks while circling an opponent’s flank, attacking three times in a quick flurry during the evade. Roughly the same damage as Flanking Strike but with no boon removal and no unblockable attack. Tracking identical to the Ranger’s evasive sword manoeuvre but with differing animation and attack spots. We don’t want another Flanking Strike issue.

#4: Gut Punch – 5 Initiative
Jab your opponent in the ribs, stunning him for 1/4 of a second before jamming your dagger inside. Damage can be debated.

#5: Cheap Shot – 6 Initiative
Slash your dagger across the opponent’s face, disorientating him and putting you in stealth (this functions identical to Cloak and Dagger but with much lower damage and faster cast time).

Unarmed with Pistol in main hand:

#3: Blunderbuss – 5 Initiative
Overload your pistol, firing 5 projectiles that cause bleeds in a shotgun spread. If all 5 projectiles hit a single target, that target is knocked back 300 units (not knocked down, just back). Damage of all the projectiles on a single target should be somewhere roughly the same as Repeater, not including the bleeds.

#4: Shooting Range – 5 Initiative
Fire your pistol underhand in all directions multiple times (akin to a blatantly unrealistic movie sequence like 1:30 at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PX4UYN_a9I but with a single pistol) for 2 seconds, blinding and weakening targets for 5 seconds in a 360-degree radius. Blind re-applies with each hit and Weakness refreshes duration instead of stacking. Range could be either PBAoE or 300-ish.

#5: Eagle Eye – 6 Initiative
Rapidly fire your pistol and reflect all projectiles directly ahead of you for 1 second. If there are no projectiles to reflect, the free projectiles from your shots cause 5 seconds of Confusion (3 stacks on hit, applies once. Actual damage is negligible, akin to Head Shot).

Unarmed with Sword in main hand:

#3: Counterbalance – 5 Initiative
Evade before shifting your weight, hurling the hilt of your sword across your opponent’s face with such momentum that they are knocked down for 1.5 seconds. You are rooted during the use of this skill. Cast time/evade time equivalent to that of the cast time of Pistol Whip.

#4: Thousand Stabs – 4 Initiative
Channel a block identical to Nine-Tailed Strike. Catch your opponent’s weapon and jab them multiple times for high damage Opponent is immobilised for the duration of the retaliation attacks. Return initiative if not attacked. Only affects a single target.

#5: Uppercut – 6 Initiative (2 suggestions here)
1 -Deliver a fast blow to your opponent’s chin with your free hand, blinding them for 1 second and placing you in stealth while he is reeling.
2 – Sidestep (evade) the next attack and land a fast blow to your opponent’s chin with your free hand, stunning them for 1/2 second.

As for the lower stats/sigils by not actually having an off-hand, the main-hand weapon stats should just double up for both hands and the empty slot in the Hero panel can be slotted with a Sigil/Orb of your choice. Or, if you want to go another route, you can not be able to slot one at all, at it’s effectively now a two-handed weapon.

Hey there mate, I happened across your name and thought “Who can that be?”
Anyways, I read your point of view and I think it holds a lot of interesting features.
Mainly, I’d like to say following things;

1- In some of the descriptions of offhand no-armed attacks you mention “jabbing” with your dagger, sword or shooting with your pistol. This goes against the principle of offhand concept I think. If you use an attack related to the offhand, why are you using the mainhand weapon?
This is no critizism, but either you you use the mainhand weapon, by switching it to your offhand, or you use nothing but your fist while using the 4-5 skill.
Otherwise it’s like you still use 2 daggers instead of one.

2- I really like the idea of introducing bare-handed combat, cause it seems like something that’s natural and lacking in the game. You introduce the feature of using only a main-hand weapon… what if we fight without any weapon, just bare-handed?
Pros/cons?

3- Stats, this seems an issue indeed, but your hands don’t have runes or anything in them, as far as I think. I suggest another solution. Introduce the “gauntlet” as a weapon. This would allow you to smash people with your gauntlet, that would have certain stats.

Thanks for the thread

Hey there.

1 – I’m not considering the bare hand as off-hand at this point. I’m now considering the main-hand weapon as a two-handed weapon. There is a hand free to do other things, but now you have one weapon, and both hands are now relating to its usage. Especially with Thousand Stabs, my implication being that your free hand catches the incoming attack and your sword hand attacks past your free hand. More examples would be Blunderbuss, the animation involving your free hand dumping excess ammunition in to the barrel, Counterbalance involving your free hand swinging with the momentum of the strike, and so on.

2 – I think that would be too complex. Introducing a new weapon just for Thieves that involves only hand to hand combat would be going in to a martial arts, monk route, and that’s not what I want for the profession.

3 – I think that this seems a little unnecessary, too. Perhaps out of place, as well. I would never see an acrobatic Thief wielding a powerful gauntlet on his hands. He would want his hands free of weighted restrictions.

Thanks for your thoughts!

lol basically you want each class’s unique skills to be thief’s.

Rezzet.3614:

lol basically you want each class’s unique skills to be thief’s.

I literally have NO idea what you’re talking about. Care to elaborate, because this all looks Thief-y to me?

Alright no martial combat :p. I don’t really see the point of not simply using the offhand weapons in that case. If you are going to use the weapon in your mainhand anyway, just use an offhand of the same. I know thieves can’t use sword offhand, but that’s a restriction to the class. If you want to use dual sword, play warrior.

Thieves already have the lowest pool of weapons in the game – this opens up a larger pool of skills, ergo opening possibilities for differing builds and spicing up the flavour of the profession – right now, there is very little you can do that’s new and refreshing.

What you’re saying is the EXACT problem I’m talking about – “why would you ever not use an off-hand?” That’s the question everyone will ask when the main-hand skill #3 is just a terrible version of the dual skill (Sword #3 is literally just a stab with no side effect – what on earth is that?). As simply being a push to get the dual skills, it’s extremely poor. Thieves need more under their belt. Nothing is more fitting for a Thief than getting tricky with a free hand while using a one-handed weapon.

I should also point out that Mesmers can use dual swords. MESMERS. If anyone is deserving of getting dual swords at this point, it’s a Thief.

They intended to make thieves unable to use dual sword, they’re not a heavy melee class after all, but a sneaking around class. Imagine a thief with 2 giant swords in his fists… hardly stealthy.
Thieves have enough dmg output as it is. There’s not really a need for more of it.
Toy around with different combinations::
- sword+pistol
- dagger+pistol
- dagger+dagger
- sword+dagger
- pistol+dagger
- pistol+pistol
- shortbow

That seems like a nice amount of posibilities to pick from. And don’t say they aren’t viable… every weaponset is viable if you have the right set-up. So many people go with builds that are predictable, cause they are the only ones people dare use. Find something new, be creative and you’ll be better than the mob.

That’s what I do on my engineer/warrior in SPvP, and believe me it works out.
The things they least expect are often the best.

And Mesmers are not a deception-based class? I can imagine a Thief with two swords just fine – Sword and Dagger looks rather lop-sided, and a second sword to match would be great. Rogues in WoW looked fine with dual sword wielding, and they’re even more focused on stealth than Thieves are intended to (stealth is relatively new in the game’s development. Did you know that Thief was actually the Assassin from GW1 for quite a few years before the lore of the game (Assassins originating from Cantha) came to light and the Steal/Stealth mechanics were put in place to differentiate? Shadowstep was originally the only “deception” style skill pool). Also, “giant” swords is a rather big exaggeration – there are plenty of sword designs that are not unwieldy longswords and I would have a tough time finding a one-handed sword that looks “giant”. Hell, the legendary sword in my hand looks standard fare, and I would see no problem holding two of them.

Where did you get the impression I want more damage output? I want more options, not more damage. Adding a different weapon set does not somehow increase damage output. That literally makes zero sense – if S/S had more damage than every other set, there would be no point in any other set existing?

I have played Thief for 1500 hours, and I have had plenty of experience with absolutely every single combination that there is to offer. I had built setups with every single variation of sword, dagger, pistol and bow. It is not enough. They are not all viable at endgame. Not even close.

Examples:

- S/P only works effectively in PvE if you either run life-leech with glass or spec with PTV gear and gimp your damage completely.
- D/P pretty much serves the same purpose S/P does with blind and interrupt control, but is absolutely not viable at high level dungeons due to the single-target focus and lack of stealth access without wasting huge amounts of initiative and running awkward combos that can easily break. It is sub-par in WvW and only really works if you’re using it as a gap closer.
- D/D is D/D. I don’t even need to elaborate on why this is the most overused set in the game.
- S/D is extremely versatile and one of the better combinations.
- P/D is great for a WvW condition damage or PvE venom build, but is mostly worthless anywhere else. Especially in PvE if you’re planning on sharing your venoms, which have the range of my toenail.
- P/P is extremely poor damage in comparison to other weapon sets. It’s better than the bow against a boss for the focused damage, but it’s mediocre in every other situation, with no building options for stealth, relatively low damage output on Unload, no multi-target focus unless you use Black Powder which S/P and D/P use a lot more effectively and the hilariously stupid juggling act between the condition/direct damage hybrid autoattack and Unload which intends on being a direct damage spike.
- Shortbow is also very versatile.

I should note that when I say “PvE”, I mean dungeons and other similiar content. Open-world leveling could be done without weapons at all, it’s that easy.

Realistically, you’re looking at S/P, D/D, S/D, P/D and Shortbow being useful/most efficient in the long term, and even those weapon sets have extremely set-in-stone trait combinations that benefit them. There is not much room to deviate from any norms, because any deviations make you worse as a result. There is nothing you can do that is new or creative after you’ve fleshed these setups out. You’d just be gimping yourself.

Anyways, S/S isn’t even what I’m talking about. That’s an entirely different discussion for another day. I’m talking about one-handed and light. I still don’t understand why you’re opposed to a profession having more options to branch out and become something less one-dimensional and more interesting.

Ok, go blame the devs then

Regarding #3 Weave.
Ranger sword 3 has identical issues to Thief sword 3 with tracking/pathing issues.

I also thin Thieves should have a single weapon style for sword mh, dagger mh and pistol mh. We only have 21 weapon skills, the pure d/d, sb, p/p and s/x then there is only one additional skill for the hybrid sets s/p, d/p, p/d.

I would love to be able to use just a single dagger in my main hand and have a full set of five skills without needing an offhand. The only real hurdle is lacking the attributes.

I’ve been talking about these skills with a friend who is hugely enthusiastic about skills and builds and balance, so I will be modifying these in due time.

A suggestion that we came up with for the lack of stats is, rather than the main-hand weapon stats just doubling (that would be ever so slightly unfair on the grounds that you don’t need to purchase the extra stats and so you’re getting another weapon for “free”), a new trait should be placed in the Adept section of Deadly Arts or Trickery, replacing either Corrosive Traps or Merciful Ambush. This new trait would be called something like “Hands-Free” or “Purist”, which increases the stats of your main-hand weapon by 0.6x while an off-hand weapon is absent. This means that you don’t get an entire set of stats for free, but you instead get a portion to make up for the new set of skills gained in the process.

That “Hands-free” is a nice idea Auesis. I’ll support your idea, in so far as you also let other classes get offhand skill when not wielding a weapon. (points at engineer).

I’ll give my +1 to weapons free offhand. I think there would be some fluff issues behind the skills when it comes to the various armor classes though. Gut punching a guy in plate mail doesn’t really make much sense. Eye gouge, nerve pinch, throat strike, groin punch, etc. might be better. Designers aren’t only limited to hands either. #4 could be a hand strike and #5 could be a kick. As already pointed out though, we wouldn’t want to get too Bruce Lee with it. Thieves should be brawlers.

Auesis.7301:

I should also point out that Mesmers can use dual swords. MESMERS. If anyone is deserving of getting dual swords at this point, it’s a Thief.

In regard to the above, mesmers don’t wield the second sword as an offensive weapon. Skill 4, is a block and skill 5 is a summon. Seems to me the mesmer uses the second sword more as a shield and a focus respectively.

Keeping with the acrobatic thief motif and dual wielding swords, a block would be inappropriate (no self respecting thief is going to tell a boss “Hit me, I dare you”) and another dodge would be OP. It’s hard to think of a skill choice that would fit and yet remain unique.