Guild Wars 2

- Preparedness goes baseline
- Thrill of Crime moves to Minor II (former Preparedness)
- New Adept III (former ToC): Convenient Oppertunity: Gain 1 initiative everytime you hit a disabled foe (stun, daze, knockdown, knockback, launch, frar, taunt), ICD 1s
-Combine Pressure Striking and Bewildering Ambush to [insert cool name here] as Expert III (Maybe decrease confusion stacks from 5 to 3)
- New GM III: Painful Movement: Everytime you cripple a foe you also inflict 2 stacks of bleeding for 4s. (Maybe reduce to 1 stack or insert a ICD of 1s, if 2 stacks is to OP)

Add:
Roll for Initiative rework:
Reduce CD to 40s
Rename to Surprising Retreat: Same as now but without gaining initiative.
Switch Skill (availabe for 5s) *Dashing Onslaught: Dash forward to your foe and get 6 initiative

Thoughts?

Generally not too bad. At least not op, and the choices are reasonable and useful at the same time.
However trickery is also the most mandatory traitline next to daredevil.
If buffs happen, I would like to see it to other specialisations. Shadow arts, acrobatics most noticeably.

Flat cooldown reduction on steal by 20% and then removing it from SoH paired with preparedness baseline would remove the need for Trickery. This enables SA to be used instead of trickery for defensive reasons/condition cleansing while maintaining sustained initiative regen via Rejuv.

Put fury-on-steal in CS for Unrelenting with a 8s duration for uptime preservation and you’ve got yourself a buffed CS line which can function without the need for awkward procs and effectively override the function of ToTC, enabling builds like DA/CS/SA while not buffing DA/Tr/DD.

hey ur ideas are not that bad Kydar. this would give condition builds more sense. i recently thought of a change to Cloak and Dagger to:
Cloak and Dagger
Shadowstep and stab your foe. Vanish in stealth, leaving them vulnerable.

Damage Damage: 458 (1.25)
Currently invisible. Ends if you deal damage. Stealth (3s): Invisible to foes.
3 Vulnerability (5s): 3% Incoming Damage, 3% Incoming Condition Damage
Range: 900

to make d/d as rewarding as risky it is.

Asrat.2645:

Generally not too bad. At least not op, and the choices are reasonable and useful at the same time.

Thx

Deathrubber.3861:

hey ur ideas are not that bad Kydar. this would give condition builds more sense.

That was exactly the idea behind this. The GM Confusion trait is in my opinion not GM worthy…that’s why I would like to see this change.

Deathrubber.3861:

i recently thought of a change to Cloak and Dagger to:
Cloak and Dagger
Shadowstep and stab your foe. Vanish in stealth, leaving them vulnerable.

Damage Damage: 458 (1.25)
Currently invisible. Ends if you deal damage. Stealth (3s): Invisible to foes.
3 Vulnerability (5s): 3% Incoming Damage, 3% Incoming Condition Damage
Range: 900

to make d/d as rewarding as risky it is.

I think this would make C&D too OP if it has an integrated Shadowstep. Would like to let it be as it is atm. Maybe change Vuln to 5 stacks or change it to blind for 3s.

Without assuming changes to any other profession, here are three things off the top of my head…

1. Either instant-weapon swap with no cooldown, or swapping weapons refills the initiative pool.

2. Give the Thief the ability to either punch through or negate passive defenses. Priorities would be self-harming defenses such as Mirror of Anguish, Reaper’s Protection, Amplified Wrath, and Retaliation.

3. The Thief’s nature seems to warrant some sort of immunity or resistance to traps specifically. Either by ignoring traps, disabling a trap (with cooldown), taking reduced damage, or at least resisting a trap’s movement/containment properties.

Kageseigi.2150:

Without assuming changes to any other profession, here are three things off the top of my head…

1. Either instant-weapon swap with no cooldown, or swapping weapons refills the initiative pool.

2. Give the Thief the ability to either punch through or negate passive defenses. Priorities would be self-harming defenses such as Mirror of Anguish, Reaper’s Protection, Amplified Wrath, and Retaliation.

3. The Thief’s nature seems to warrant some sort of immunity or resistance to traps specifically. Either by ignoring traps, disabling a trap (with cooldown), taking reduced damage, or at least resisting a trap’s movement/containment properties.

1. No
2. No
3. For ever no….

Sry, but all of this is absolutly OP XD

3. No, quite the contrary: we should be vulnerable to being catched off-guard/by guards (sry, couldnt help it)
2 Is debatable. These passive defenses should be removed from the game altogether, but not for thieves specifically. Most of them are probably meant to counter one-hit thieves.
1 I would suggest a different approach: Weapon swap on 2-3 sec cooldown+initiative cost.
No cooldown at all would make things too easy and initiative refill would be op.
Ini cost however would even punish you more for burning your initiative too much, because it would become a little harder to change to shortbow and run.

Kydar Schattendolch.6879:

Sry, but all of this is absolutly OP XD

Compared to???

Asrat.2645:

3. No, quite the contrary: we should be vulnerable to being catched off-guard/by guards (sry, couldnt help it)
2 Is debatable. These passive defenses should be removed from the game altogether, but not for thieves specifically. Most of them are probably meant to counter one-hit thieves.
1 I would suggest a different approach: Weapon swap on 2-3 sec cooldown+initiative cost.
No cooldown at all would make things too easy and initiative refill would be op.
Ini cost however would even punish you more for burning your initiative too much, because it would become a little harder to change to shortbow and run.

3. Still vulnerable. Just not AS vulnerable. And speaking of traps, where’s the good ol’ “disable traps” ability for “rogues” in this game? Perhaps a Thief’s blast finisher could trigger traps. Cluster bombs from a safe distance :-)

2. Yes, I’d prefer the passives get removed entirely, but this is in the absence of that. Even if a Thief’s stun isn’t able to bypass Mirror of Anguish/etc., at least it could negate it so no one gets stunned. And sadly, I don’t even know what a one-hit Thief is these days.

1. Indeed, the lower cooldown is much preferable. Even if there is a small initiative cost if during combat.

EDIT: This is all speaking of the base Thief profession. I can’t speak for Daredevil. And also, thinking of passive traits, if there must be such a thing, why can’t other professions have something more aligned with Hard to Catch instead? It keeps us from getting stunned, but it doesn’t actually harm the attacker. Surely, there could be alternatives?

Mirror of Anguish: Break stun and create a phantasm

Reaper’s Protection: Break stun and gain 25% Life Force

My ideas

Revealed Training: add 1 stack of stability and/or protection for 3 sec.
Bountiful Theft: make baseline also make this ability to actually steal boons – stacks+duration.
[Insert name here] (instead of bountiful): you transfer 1 condition when you interrupt a foe, 1s ICD.

1. Give CS better traits. And not just “heres some fury”, I mean actual traits with substance to them. Just having fury and some extra damage doesn’t do much. Invigorating Precision is on the right track.

2. Make at least half of Bountiful Theft’s boonsteal go baseline; fits thematically and is needed- Allow it to steal at least half stacks and half duration shared with allies. Atm it doesn’t really help much, and this way it would allow a thief to pick out a target and turn their own buffs against them, which fits with what a thief does and again, is needed

3. Cloak and dagger blind, reduce initiative by 1, just make the reward worth the risk because atm it’s not worth it. (Maybe even increasing the stealth duration)

4. Death blossom damage please.

5. Improve/rework Pistol mainhand. Most likely reworking #2 and buffing #1’s damage,

6. Give Larcenous Strike an extra boon steal.

7. Revealed Training applies resistance.

8. Make Dagger Mastery from poison into this (I just think its a really cool idea) Gain 7% damage if you wield a mainhand dagger, and 10% damage if you wield an offhand dagger. So if you were d/p, you get 7%. If you are D/D, you get 17%. If you are S/D, you get 10%. Fits thematically with daggers and rewards you for playing the riskier style.

Edit: Forgot make preparedness baseline.

Kageseigi.2150:

Kydar Schattendolch.6879:

Sry, but all of this is absolutly OP XD

Compared to???

Kageseigi.2150:

Without assuming changes to any other profession, here are three things off the top of my head…

1. Either instant-weapon swap with no cooldown, or swapping weapons refills the initiative pool.
—> No profession has instant weapon swap and IMO its good that it is this way. And ini refill would be very op, as u can e.g. double take same weapons and burst very hard.

2. Give the Thief the ability to either punch through or negate passive defenses. Priorities would be self-harming defenses such as Mirror of Anguish, Reaper’s Protection, Amplified Wrath, and Retaliation.
—> Passive defenses are still defenses, so negate these would make them less valuable. No profession should negate defenses in this way. And IMO no profession should be able to do this in a way without traits as a baseline opportunity.

3. The Thief’s nature seems to warrant some sort of immunity or resistance to traps specifically. Either by ignoring traps, disabling a trap (with cooldown), taking reduced damage, or at least resisting a trap’s movement/containment properties.
—>Resistance to skills is nothing to discuss. It’s not balanced if a professions has a resistance to traps or other types of skills. In that case you should grant other professions as well resistances to some skills. I’ts way to ahrd to balance. And too OP for beeing baseline.

But that’s only my opinion

I still want ground target Death Blossom so I can use it anywhere without worry of cliffs/ledges. Plz do this, Anet.

Doggie.3184:

I still want ground target Death Blossom so I can use it anywhere without worry of cliffs/ledges. Plz do this, Anet.

Please don’t or make it an option. I actually think that about everything people want to have in game “please please make it an option” as usually my own gameplay gets a lot worse when someone else wants some fluff.

Jana.6831:

Doggie.3184:

I still want ground target Death Blossom so I can use it anywhere without worry of cliffs/ledges. Plz do this, Anet.

Please don’t or make it an option. I actually think that about everything people want to have in game “please please make it an option” as usually my own gameplay gets a lot worse when someone else wants some fluff.

Whatever it takes, I’m just really tired of being completely banned from using my main damage skill because I’m too close to a ledge. It’s really an outdated mechanic at this point. TBH I really miss the original Death Blossom from GW1 and always disliked them adding the leaping part.

Never played GW1 and I’m usually not standing close to an edge but if; I have CiS HAH!
Seriously; I got that used to that trait that I was dying with my guard 3 times in our DBL keep yesterday.

Kydar Schattendolch.6879:

But that’s only my opinion

Thanks, explanations help understand reasoning :-)

I’ll try to explain mine as well…

Kydar Schattendolch.6879:

—> No profession has instant weapon swap and IMO its good that it is this way. And ini refill would be very op, as u can e.g. double take same weapons and burst very hard.

True, no profession has instant weapon swap. Though no other profession uses the initiative system. So being unique and being balanced uniquely because of that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. And that applies to more than just weapon swap. It applies to every potential change to the Thief. Also, not everything needs to be made baseline. Some things can be traitable. There are multiple methods and extents to each possible change. For me, personally, the goal is to make the Thief a more credible threat to taking and holding a point.

For weapon swap specifically, again, different extents are possible. Refilling the initiative on weapon swap (or having separate initiative pools), though leaving the cooldown rate at 10 seconds, is the way to balance more inline with other professions. Right now, the Thief is being punished for swapping weapons. If it uses all of the initiative with one weapon, switching to the other does nothing but lock you into that set and proc whatever sigils/traits are equipped. Yes, that may require the Thief to play more wisely, but that certainly does not mean it is balanced.

And while it can lead to some powerful combinations (perma-stealth with double D/P), it will also mean a true role choice. Take two melee sets, you lose your mobility with Shortbow. Take D/P and Shortbow, then you have the ability to apply full melee pressure without fear of losing escapability. Take D/P and S/D, and be able to apply full pressure with two different combat styles. The point is that you won’t have to limit your attack potential worrying about sustainability. They will be much more independent. In such a case, Preparedness also becomes much less significant (or, perhaps, just perhaps, should be removed).

The alternative is to reduce the cooldown on weapon swap. Warriors can trait to reduce it to 5 seconds. Even down to 4 seconds with the Warrior rune. Engineers get to switch kits on the fly with only about a 1 second cooldown. That gives advantage even if skills are still on cooldown. At least it can provide quick access to ranged/melee auto-attacks. The Thief has no such advantage. And lacking both sustainability and necessary offensive capability, the Thief needs the ability to switch combat styles more than anyone else… especially with killer traps and so much AoE being thrown around. Being stuck on a melee set isn’t safe when out of initiative and getting blasted, and getting locked into ranged without initiative doesn’t apply enough pressure when the opposition isn’t so great.

Basically, make swapping weapons more than a punishment. Currently, with a single initiative pool, it forces the Thief to choose to fully commit to a fight to win or to save the ability to escape. Unfortunately, the current base Thief is ill-equipped to win fights on its own, and saving initiative to escape makes it even less effective as a fighter, reinforcing the concept of the “+1” role, though making it even worse at that as well.

Giving the Thief a no/low-cooldown on weapon swap allows it to actively adapt to any given situation on the fly (great for the “active playstyle/profession” concept), while refilling/giving a separate initiative pool on weapon swap allows the Thief to engage with full force without making it a sitting duck if the enemy survives its burst.

Kydar Schattendolch.6879:

—> Passive defenses are still defenses, so negate these would make them less valuable. No profession should negate defenses in this way. And IMO no profession should be able to do this in a way without traits as a baseline opportunity.

Again, the issue here is maintaining a proper balance while keeping the Thief playstyle unique. But first, I must say that not all of my several suggestions would necessarily need to be implemented. Any single one would help on its own, even if they do seek to solve their own specific problem.

For example, refilling/having a separate initiative pool for each weapon set would help tremendously in dealing with the high amounts of passive defenses that other professions currently possess. By increasing the Thief’s number of offensive skill uses, the effectiveness of the opponent’s defenses and healing abilities lessens. It would not make the hits of the Thief’s harder, but it would allow the Thief to apply more hits.

Not only would it increase the Thief’s offensive output, but it would also increase the Thief’s defensive abilities. More initiative means more weapon-skill evades. The base Thief already lacks in both offensive capability and defensive capability separately. Because both offense and defense are tied to initiative, that lessens the effectiveness of both even more. The only solely defensive (active) ability we have is our endurance-related dodges. Everything else is tied to offense as well, and every other profession has as many dodges as the base Thief. Even our defensive passives (e.g. Hard to Catch) are inferior to those of other professions (Mirror of Anguish/Reaper’s Protection).

Basically, the current Thief is forced to choose to build for sustain to live a while longer, but not be able to kill anything… or to be able to kills things, but not last long enough to actually do it.

Personally, I’d prefer all/most of these passive defenses to just be removed from the game. However, if they are not, then the Thief needs to be given the ability to either punch through them (offensive boost), negate them (offensive/defensive boost), or the ability to sustain them, then overcome them.

From a conceptual perspective, the Thief is definitely of the “rogue/assassin” archetype… the glass-cannon/hit-and-run design. Focusing on stealth, deception, and pinpoint accuracy to be effective, it doesn’t seem to make sense that it would ever set up a perfect ambush on a lone target, then the moment it strikes, without the victim even having a hint of its existence, the Thief’s stunning strike lands perfectly… only to stun itself or run away in uncontrollable fear. And in doing so, the Thief’s only advantage being that of surprise, is left standing there at a huge disadvantage.

Again, other professions may have the sustain to deal with those types of passives. The Thief does not. The Thief relies on not getting hit at all, and to open combat by stunning yourself… that’s just absurd. So it’s lose the first-strike advantage or use a stun-breaker… and the opponent hasn’t even attempted to stun you yet.

Now, you could make the ability to punch through or negate such passives a trait choice for the Thief. But everything is tied together. Every choice a Thief must make means sacrificing something else. That’s fine. But remember that the Thief is at an inherent disadvantage already. It is already playing “catch-up” with everyone else. Other professions already have sustain along with the power to down a Thief quickly.

Kydar Schattendolch.6879:

—>Resistance to skills is nothing to discuss. It’s not balanced if a professions has a resistance to traps or other types of skills. In that case you should grant other professions as well resistances to some skills. I’ts way to ahrd to balance. And too OP for beeing baseline.

I suppose it all depends on what your standard is for judging balance. But I’ll go back to the reasoning that Thieves are unique. Thieves lack the passive defenses of others. Thieves lack the sustain of others. Thieves lack the AoE of others. Thieves lack the range of others. Thieves lack the damage output of others. Thieves lack the health pool of others. Thieves lack the condition removal of others. Thieves lack many important boons of others. There is no inherent advantage in being a Thief over anyone else… the base Thief has the same number of dodges, and even the same movement speed. Thieves can’t even trait to be passively faster. Yes, Thieves can use weapon-skills based on initiative instead of direct-cooldown, but once it’s gone, there’s no swapping weapons to gain more output.

So as far as a resistance to a certain type of skill goes, I can see justification for it. First, I’ll start with the least of the reasons, and that goes back to being roguish. Rogues are the anti-trap class. They detect traps, they disable traps. That alone is enough reason for a party to choose to take them in other games. While it may not be important in this game, it would fit the aura of the Thief.

Secondly, again, the Thief is an active playstyle and very fragile. Supposedly quite evasive as well if you care about the profession description. In order to actively defend against something, you must see/know it’s coming. Traps, until triggered, are invisible. Can you always see them being laid? No. So the only true tell is when it is actually triggered. Is that always enough time to identify what type of trap you’ve triggered and to get out of it before you’ve been hit hard (at least for Guardian traps), I suppose that’s up to player skill and latency. Not to mention traps that actually suck you into them… stacked on other traps.

Thirdly, not all traps are equal. Aren’t Guardians already considered a counter to Thieves? What kind of traps do Thieves get? One that knocks the target down. One that immobilizes and puts conditions on the target (which is weak for a power Thief). One that calls an AI Thief right beside you, not even at the target, which also reveals your position if you’re Stealthed. And one that does absolutely nothing to the target, but does briefly buff you and allows you to blindly “teleport” to the target IF you are lucky and don’t teleport into a wall 5 feet from your current position because of the game’s pathfinding issues. In other words, only one trap actually does any damage at all, and it’s condition damage. The others require you to be directly on top of your target to do any damage whatsoever. If this isn’t a call for the Thief needing a balance swing in its favor, I don’t know what is.

Finally, shutting down another profession’s abilities isn’t unknown to Guild Wars 2. The Thief, supposedly the master of Stealth, can be shut out of it quite easily. Look at all of the skills that Reveal a Stealthed target. Rangers, Engineers, Revenants, and even Guardians can Reveal the Thief. And while other professions can Stealth also, the Thief is the one that relies on it the most. Yet not even a Thief can Reveal anyone else (which makes no sense)… and can’t even Reveal itself without attacking something (which also makes no sense). So no, I don’t believe that giving the Thief (whether baseline or traited) the ability to counter traps would be so unprecedented. Revealed took that to a whole new level.

And again, there are many different ways this could be done. Even just making enemy traps visible to a Thief within a certain distance would be better than nothing. In fact, imagine the Thief being able to see traps, and when doing so, it makes the traps visible to others on the team also. Or, perhaps, give the Thief an extra half second or second to be in a trap before it triggers.

Of course, what I mentioned in my first post could happen. Thieves could simply walk over traps without triggering them, but still take damage if someone else triggered them. Thieves could take only a portion of damage from a trap. Thieves could disable a single trap instead of triggering it, though only one per 30 seconds or so, still making them vulnerable to stacked traps. Or Thieves could simply resist the “movement/containment” properties of certain traps, making it easier to escape or avoid.

I must confess, I still like the idea of triggering/disabling traps by Cluster Bombing them.

But yes, that’s my reasoning for these changes for the Thief… as long-winded and off-base as it may be. Again, different possibilities, different methods, different extents. Some may be baseline. Some may be traited. Some may be a combination. It’s a puzzle to be solved :-)

dream patch? Ricochet comes back as baseline

Give steal a .25 second cast time. Sadly it would never happen.

warherox.7943:

Give steal a .25 second cast time. Sadly it would never happen.

That would be one of the worst things possible, and no reason for it.

warherox.7943:

Give steal a .25 second cast time. Sadly it would never happen.

I could easily see that happening one day; followed by a landslide of hate causing it to be rolled back like the global 4s revealed. Still needs reverted in Spvp though but no one uses cloak and dagger in pvp anymore and tried to forget about it.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

warherox.7943:

Give steal a .25 second cast time. Sadly it would never happen.

That would be one of the worst things possible, and no reason for it.

Seeing how many players combo skills with steal, yes there is absolutely a reason for it. Why be positioned properly when you can just use steal mid cast of your skill?

warherox.7943:

BlaqueFyre.5678:

warherox.7943:

Give steal a .25 second cast time. Sadly it would never happen.

That would be one of the worst things possible, and no reason for it.

Seeing how many players combo skills with steal, yes there is absolutely a reason for it. Why be positioned properly when you can just use steal mid cast of your skill?

And you act as though other classes can’t combo class mechanics that are insta cast? Like Mesmer, or combo class mechanics with cast times and skills that are instant like DH virtues and traps? Yeah good argument there

Edited the title of this thread for general discussion for future Thief updates.

I think someone mentioned a similar idea with cripple applying bleed but in DA, which I think sounds more reasonable. Not only is DA our condition augment trait line, but it gives some love to the trait line that could use it more than Trickery which is, as many have said, practically mandatory.

2 stacks of 4 seconds isn’t OP at all when you consider the application, the only potential overpowered effect would come from caltrops but with how heavily they can be tossed out they might as well add a decent stack amount and put an ICD per target on it like 3 stacks for 5 seconds with an ICD of 5 seconds. This way dagger #4 can be mixed into a d/d or p/d condition build for extra damage without being dependent on spamming.