Guild Wars 2

Here’s a list of underused, subpar/bugged skills that hardly see the light of day with suggestions of myself and other’s in this very thread.

Starting off with Traits
Rending Shade: Steal boons(2 Boons) from enemies you strike with stealth attacks. Incoming damage from enemies without boons is reduced.

• Suggestion: Listening to fellow thieves on this. This is nice and all except one problem…99% of the time all spvp and wvw enemies will have boons, rendering this effect useless and a waste of an add on.

• I like rending shade. The 10 percent is an issue. I would rather see it become “Take 2 percent less damage for 10 seconds on removing a boon” This of course would be cumulative and work with any boon removal meaning if you use a BT and RS combo you get that 10 percent. The raw numbers may need a tweak. – babazhook.6805

Instant Reflexes: Evade attacks (2s) when you are struck below the health threshold.(50%)(40s ICD)

• Suggestion: TBH, just 2 seconds with a 40 second cooldown is a bit unreasonable. Reduce cooldown or buff the length by a second.

Swindler’s Equilibrium: Successfully evading an attack while wielding a sword or spear recharges steal by a static amount (1s ICD and 1s for recharge). Swords and spears deal increased damage.

• Suggestion: Wow…1 second recharge…why not 2? Sw/D or Sw/P is useless in spvp and other’s outshine it easily.

Bountiful Theft: Stealing grants you and all nearby allies vigor. You rip boons from your target and grant them to nearby allies. (2 Boons)

• Suggestion: Allow full stacks to be stolen, 1 might stack or 1 stability stack is hardly bountiful for Eternal Alchemy’s Sake.

Trickster: Reduces recharge on tricks(20%). Tricks remove conditions(1).

• Suggestion: Can I just say 1 condition for 1 skill seems a bit ridiculous considering how many are flying around now. Allow Uncatchable to proc this at LEAST.

Bewildering Ambush: Stealing also applies confusion(5 stacks).

• Suggestion:Add 5 Vulnerability as well.

Escapist’s Absolution: Remove a condition(1) whenever you evade an attack.(1s ICD)
Suggestion:Keep the ICD, add an extra condition removed.

Weapon Skills:

D/P: Wouldn’t change a thing, strong setup, great for beginners to learn

S/D: Underused as other’s are better. Infiltrator’s Strike doesn’t remove quite enough conditions, slam another for return to be removed.

S/P: Underused but potential. Give Pistol Whip the Unload treatment with initiative gain if all attacks hit. Add Whirl finisher facing forward to proc Black Powder/Add benefit if evading projectile attacks while using Pistol Whip, you gain something in return.

D/D: It’s ok, but give Dancing Dagger a benefit when it returns to you PER foe hit other than just crippling them.

Shortbow: Loved the change to Choking Gas, It encourages condition removal otherwise risks of high interupt spikes. Wouldn’t Change it at all. (IF you remove poison you’ll be fine against the interupts…just don’t reach 5 stacks during a pulse)

P/D: Bring Ricochet back with the autoattack only or original effect(See engineer pistol autoattack). Love the change as is though.

P/P: Ditto

Staff: For the love of god give the first skill for this the ability to go through the entire chain without hitting something like the Mesmer scepter mainhand. Helps deal with ranged a bit more while still leaving timing to the opponent shooting you.

AND give Dust Strike(skill 4 on staff)a change in mechanic and allow it to either shoot a LINE of smoke instead of seperated 3 impacts(were not a revanent here) OR let it create a smokescreen skill(2 seconds) in a straight line which would promote positioning of the players engaging in range AND defending (the thief, duh)

Editing when I Can for formatting and updating suggestions with names under my own suggestions

Skills:
Distracting Daggers

• First off, The Definition of Mantra(a statement or slogan repeated frequently)
• Why do mesmers get to infinitely maintain mantras until used but we cannot equip these daggers but for 25 seconds…which is supposedly to be a physical skill and physical objects? Swap mantras to be maintained for 25 second and allow these daggers to be held indefinitely or just add ours to permanent like the mantras.

• Distracting daggers is hard to use.I do think removing the time limit or extending it warranted. When you use one and a person throws up blocks, the others often go to waste. – babazhook.6805

Impact Strike

• Give it 400 range on first chain skill to match Headbutt and were ok here.

Signet of Malice

• The passive attack is hardly beneficiary even with the added bounce to trick shot on shortbow, increase the passive heal or better yet add an extra heal per condition on the foe when you land an attack. Healing: 132 , 132 passive heal default with 100 extra health per condition on foe per attack. the less conditions on foe, the less you heal by attacking. promotes condition removal in order to shut the thief using this down and removing sustain. Active heal is fine.

• “I would suggest that the passive gets a 15 percent boost and that added to it the active gets “regain 4 Initiative” – babazhook.6805

Shadow Refuge

• Fine as is but add an effect of a first pulse reveal (4 seconds) to stealthed enemies to force tactical gameplay amongst thieves and other stealthers. (just the first pulse)

Ambush

• Fine as is, just tweak it a little bit, Upon triggering, make it attack the one that triggered it instead of porting to the thief that used it. would be awesome in wvw and spvp for distractions and such.

Needle Trap

• Fine as is, but if you stepped on needles shouldn’t you be crippled a bit too? add cripple to it as well.

Shadow Trap

• This one really irks me to no end. It was popular before the change to LINE OF SIGHT and shadowstepping patches ago. It gave that thief a chance to gtfo and or to hit targets in wvw whilst roaming but now its just a terrain game. change the mechanic to instead of shadowstepping back, to portal back, let it interact with terrain like the mesmer portals (im begging you) and if an enemy triggers it, TELEPORT back to them if you so choose. the shadowsteps are so buggy with this. ALSO add a portal entre and exit icon meant for THIS skill so we know how long the duration is before it recharges as well as if we are in range to portal back(range for both the enemy that triggered it AND ending it early

Scorpion Wire

• Please increased Velocity to match that of Dancing Daggers? and fix it where the enemies getting hit ignore small pebbles because when they do…they stop mid way.

• What holds it back is the unreliabiliy as you mention.
  This should be fixed. – babazhook.6805

Hey i think its awesome that you took ur time listing all these sugestions and in general i agree with them alot :-) i especially like the staff aa one and the staf skill 4 being a short smoke wall.
That said i think some of these changes might be a bit to strong thinking about trickster and escapist absolution here. Both of them see alot of use on the thief as it is (well more or less) and one of the counters to thief has always been and should still be conditions imho so id leave these 2 traits alone as much i would like some more condition cleanse buffing the thief to much will always result in whining and nerfs xD.

The other thing is im pretty sure that needletrap does do bleeding so id ask u to
correct that becuase this might be awesome for developers to read and it should contain accurate information or else it will devalue the whole work u have done.

Im really glad ppl care so much for the game and thief in general to go to such an effort. Good work mate :-)

Jyrio.4637:

Hey i think its awesome that you took ur time listing all these sugestions and in general i agree with them alot :-) i especially like the staff aa one and the staf skill 4 being a short smoke wall.
That said i think some of these changes might be a bit to strong thinking about trickster and escapist absolution here. Both of them see alot of use on the thief as it is (well more or less) and one of the counters to thief has always been and should still be conditions imho so id leave these 2 traits alone as much i would like some more condition cleanse buffing the thief to much will always result in whining and nerfs xD.

The other thing is im pretty sure that needletrap does do bleeding so id ask u to
correct that becuase this might be awesome for developers to read and it should contain accurate information or else it will devalue the whole work u have done.

Im really glad ppl care so much for the game and thief in general to go to such an effort. Good work mate :-)

I try, its like sometimes only i notice things that arent used much in this game. skills and traits barely touched. im still not even done listing some traits yet, btw i meant cripple instead of bleed on needle trap

I think as is Trickster a great trait. I use it all the time for extra cleanse and the short cooldown synergizes nicely. It helps make Withdraw one of the better heals in the game removing up to 5 conditions (4 fixed) with a 14.5 second cooldown.

Signet of malice needs more. I would suggest that the passive gets a 15 percent boost and that added to it the active gets “regain 4 Initiative”

Needle trap is fine. It already has a lot going for it with the Immob and 3 poison 3 bleed. This is VERY powerful. The needle Immobolizes. It does not need a cripple as well. Traited you can get this thing to do 4 poison, three bleed immob, add might and add vuln.

Scorpion wire is a good skill. I use it for interrupt and a cleanse on a short cooldown. What holds it back is the unreliabiliy as you mention. This should be fixed.

Distracting daggers is hard to use.I do think removing the time limit or extending it warranted. When you use one and a person throws up blocks, the others often go to waste.

I like rending shade. The 10 percent is an issue. I would rather see it become “Take 2 percent less damage for 10 seconds on removing a boon” This of course would be cumulative and work with any boon removal meaning if you use a BT and RS combo you get that 10 percent. The raw numbers may need a tweak.

Instant reflexes is fine really. Two seconds does not seem a lot but if you consider what else happens on an evade a whole lot of stuff can kick in. IE this can end up clearing two conditions if traited SE or gaining Regen and ini if traited upperhand and so on. You will also get vigor from feline . 2 seconds is reasonable for an adept trait.

At this point all I see missing, other than the healing skill and 2 elites to complete the core skill sets, is a Shortbow trait. As all other thief weapons have a trait.

Because of its skill set and the latest skill changes to it, I think the Trickery line would work for that, and Pressure Striking could be the one that fits it better, thanks to the reworked Choking Gas.

For example, the base Shortbow has been a little too strong, so it could have its base hits reduced: 2 bounces with Trick Shot for a total of 3 hits, 3 impacts with Detonate Cluster down from 4, and 3 pulses for Chocking Gas.

Then Pressure Striking would bring back that toned down power by beomcing the Shortbow trait, and in addition to the Torment on interrupt that synergizes with Choking Gas, it would add 2 bounces Trick Shot for a total of kittens, 1 impact to Detonate Cluster for a total of 4, and 1 pulse to Choking Gas for a total of 4, making it easier for it to trigger the torment.

Funny thing about scorpion wire, if you use it on players on a slight slope they will fly up in the air and take fall damage, this also occurs with the dragonhunter’s skill. The pulls are similar so it doesn’t seem like it’d be too much trouble to fix the skill if they wanted to.