Guild Wars 2

Shade
Thief ES focusing on life stealing and hindering foes with blind, cripple, immobilize, and other negative conditions, amplifying the thief’s natural abilities to do that. Involves a lot of aoe dark and smoke fields. The new weapon is a scepter, and the new utility types are corruptions.

New Profession Mechanic
Corruption Bar: A bar with 3 sections. You fill up ? of a section every time you apply blind to someone. 2 sec icd to gaining more in your corruption bar. You can activate one of 3 Shade Skills, based on how much of the bar is filled up. Generic 20 sec cd.

1 Section Filled: Shade’s Mark: Create a smoke field around your target’s location. Blind them for 3 secs. The smoke field pulses cripple for 1 sec every sec. 5 sec duration.

2 Sections FIlled: Shade’s Aura: Teleport to target are and evade all attacks for 3 secs. Become an aoe dark field that pulses blind for 1 sec every sec.

3 Sections Filled: Shade Form: Creates an aoe around you that follows you, is a dark field, and deals high damage every sec. 6 sec duration. Become invincible for the first 3 secs. If used, the cd on Shade Skills becomes doubled.

Scepter Skills (900 range unless otherwise specified)
Skill 1: Shadowblast: Straightforward dark energy blast.
—> Eleventh Hour: Another energy blast. Deals more damage if enemy is blinded
——> Midnight Toll: Energy blast that siphons some help.

Skill 2: Shade’s Grasp: Target area becomes a small cyclone of darkness for 1 sec. At the end of the one sec, enemies in it are immobilized for 3 secs and take large amounts of damage. Dark field. 10 sec cd.

Skill 3: Shadow Torrent: Enter a stance for a maximum of 10 secs. Moving cancels the stance. While in this stance, constantly fire shadowy blasts of energy that deal small damage at your target, but fire quickly. You may switch targets in the middle of using this skill. 20 sec cd.

Heal Corruption
Newfound Life: Heal for a large amount. You become poisoned for 3 secs. Has a small number of evade frames, less than a dodge. Takes 1 sec to channel. Evade frames are in the channel, right before the heal. 30 sec cd.

Utility Corruptions (900 range)
Shade’s Evil: Bleed for 5 secs. Gain 10 might for 5 secs, and fury for 5 secs. 10 sec cd.

Shade’s Cowardice: Become revealed for 1 sec. Create a smoke field for 5 secs at your location, and teleport backwards 600. 15 sec cd.

Lifesblood: Become weakened for 5 secs. Weaken your foe for 5 seconds and steal about 2K health from them. 15 sec cd.

Dark Fog: If your health is above 50%, a dark field appears at your location and you apply blind for 3 secs with your next 3 attacks. If your health is below 50%, a smoke field appears at your location and gain stealth for 3 secs. If you use the smoke field version, the cd is doubled. 10 sec cd.

Elite Corruption
Shadowed Ascent: Float yourself for 3 secs, and become invulnerable for 3 secs. Add one section to your Corruption Bar. At the end of the three secs, blast massive damage (REALLY MASSIVE) to all foes in 900 range. 70 sec cd.
—> Pure Evil: Stunbreak out of your float, lose invulnerability, and deal damage equivalent to how long you were floating to all foes in 900 range.

Edit: Formatting

We don’t need new mechanics just fixes and upgrades to the systems we already have. Remove the stealth attack ICD, bring back Riccochet, revert S/D and SB nerfs, overhaul CnD and shuffle around some traits to make the tree more sensical.

If they did this, the thief would at least get back some of its lost luster and we would all have more build diversity. What we don’t need is another set of mechanics that under-perform or over-perform for a few weeks and then get nerfed into oblivion.

So much this ^ I want my old FS/LS back it is balanced perfectly for the current system, the biggest polish I could hope for is a clean up of the ridiculous pre/after casts thief skills have.

I’m not trying to fix thief, just trying to make a interesting idea for a future es. I agree on the fixes needed though