Guild Wars 2

With all of the AoE flying around, the Thief seems to quickly melt in team fights.

If you could do something about it, in what way would you improve the Thief’s survivability against AoE?

Perhaps some sort of old Diamond Skin?

2 seconds of Resistance after a dodge roll?

1 second Resistance/Protection upon entering an AoE?

Take half damage (direct and conditional) from AoE attacks. Think of a Saving Throw/Evasion from D&D.

Being the master of poison, should a Thief have immunity to poison, or only take half damage? Or at least not suffer healing penalties from poison?

Moving on to anti-trap (perhaps wells also) possibilities…

Blinding Powder upon triggering a trap
(And to throw in something extra… Blinding Powder whenever immobilized by anything)

Detect traps: All opposing traps are visible

Ignore traps: Cannot trigger a trap, but can still be affected if someone else triggers it

Disable traps: Destroys a trap instead of triggering it. Options would be…
A: Always
B: While out of combat
C: Only when above a certain health threshold
D: Cooldown-based

What is your list of possibilities?

Nothing sry. We should not try to stay in the middle of a team fight. We move in and move out, we do it wrong: we die.
I’d glady give that position to the rev, if they boosted my dueling capabilities in exchange.

Detaunt: After using steal, enemies within XX radius deal 50% less dmg to you for X seconds. Enemies dealt dmg from your attacks are no longer affected.

A rifle…. Stay outside the AoE, GG.

Asrat.2645:

Nothing sry. We should not try to stay in the middle of a team fight. We move in and move out, we do it wrong: we die.
I’d glady give that position to the rev, if they boosted my dueling capabilities in exchange.

I guess my problem is more with AoE than anything. Team fights just multiply that exponentially. Even if I was able to get in, throw one attack, and get out of an AoE without taking a vital risk (especially on a glass build), I’d be happy… especially for opponents who just sit on point and AoE themselves.

We can say that it’s not a Thief’s role to 1v1 or fight on point, but that’s only because of the Thief’s current limitations. If the Thief did not have those limitations, then roles expand.

Its kinda funny watching necros laying staff skills all around them. It only means free escapist absolution procs.
Outside of teamfights I cant say I have much problems with aoe.
Its big red circles, at least you can avoid them. Some other skills are much harder to play against.
Sure, there are situations where excessive aoe can be annoying, but it usually wont decide the fights.

I would remove the swap-time timer on weapons and allow thieves to freely engage or disengage at will with whatever weapon they choose. This fits the idea of using whatever skill, whenever you need it, in exchange for initiative and not being bound by cooldown timers.

I would also reduce the base timers on non-basilisk’s venom to 30 seconds to differentiate between elite and non-elite venom skills.

I would also buff the damage of unload slightly and improve the speed of the projectile for body shot. I would also convert body shot to a knockdown w/ vulnerability.

saerni.2584:

I would remove the swap-time timer on weapons and allow thieves to freely engage or disengage at will with whatever weapon they choose. This fits the idea of using whatever skill, whenever you need it, in exchange for initiative and not being bound by cooldown timers.

I’ve been wanting this for the longest time. Since initiative does not refill on weapon swap, I don’t understand what the issue would be. At least it would allow a Thief to be able to jump into a fight with melee when there’s not much AoE, jump out and go ranged when things get too hot, and re-enter when it cools down… without any delay or fear of getting stuck with one weapon set.

Well, that is for Shortbow or Pistol/Pistol. But it would also allow for changing up tactics mid-battle with melee sets (eg. going from Dagger/Pistol to Sword/Dagger), or even better combos (Shadow Shot → Shadow Strike similar to Infiltrator’s Strike → Infiltrator’s Return).

saerni.2584:

I would remove the swap-time timer on weapons and allow thieves to freely engage or disengage at will with whatever weapon they choose. This fits the idea of using whatever skill, whenever you need it, in exchange for initiative and not being bound by cooldown timers.

I could get behind this. Maybe give it the delay of engineers switching kits (very minor), but that’s really it. Then we could just give Quick pockets an ICD so it can’t be abused. I mean our initiative is across both weapon sets so it makes sense to me.

Fix pistol mainhand and up the boon stripping.

So something like returning the 2 boon steal on S/D #3 from one and have Body Shot strip boons also. Other candidates for boon stripping might be Death Blossom, shortbow auto and Dust Strike on staff.

Also give back Thieves ability to stack might, you used to be able to easily hold 10 stacks by taking Acro and Shadow Arts. The might stacking on signets/traps just isn’t cutting it.