Guild Wars 2

Hello all. I wanted to hold a discussion on Arcane Thievery to gather some thoughts on the current state of this ability, and make the case that it should be redesigned.

“Send three conditions you have to your foe and steal three of their boons.”

I wasn’t playing the game when it first launched, so my perspective is going to be limited to early 2014 around the end of the 2nd WvW tournament. Back then, boon generation was relatively limited. Certain builds like D/D elementalist and frontline guardian benefited greatly from their trait-based 30% boon duration modifiers. Boons were harder to come by, but that scarcity forced players to make meaningful decisions on when to engage, how to engage, and whether or not they should change their builds.

Today, it is very much the opposite. Many classes have access to low cooldown stability, might-stacking potential, and plentiful defensive boons. It has reached a point where amongst my guild members, I even use the term “cover boons” (in reference to “cover conditions”) for the smatterings of swiftness/regen/fury/retaliation that get pumped out in a 5-man party that diversify the corruptible pool of boons we use to preserve our resistance and stability.

It is apparent to me that Arcane Thievery in its current execution is under-utilized across the game modes. I think the reason for this is because the number of boons and conditions transferred are too few to make a meaningful difference against the meta builds in PvP and WvW, and that there are few encounters in PvE that actively challenge the player on the boon level. Too often are Mesmers shoehorned into taking the Inspiration trait line just to survive the onslaught of conditions. I’m proposing a couple different changes to Arcane Thievery and am looking for feedback.

1. Increase the number of boons/conditions transferred to a value of five.
2. Reduce the cooldown of Arcane Thievery to a value of 30 seconds.
3. Change the function of the skill into a PBAoE cast (600 radius, 5 target limit) that transfers one condition and one boon per target.
4. Change the function of the skill to apply a five second debuff upon a target (and corresponding buff upon the player) that pulses boon and condition swapping while within 1200 range.

What do you guys think? Do you agree that Arcane Thievery needs to be updated? Let me know in the replies.

Most classes have a passive that does this on having a number of condis on you. We don’t have that. Imo it should be a passive somewhere in the Chaos line.