Guild Wars 2

Dropping my suggestion in the pot for the next thief elite spec. This is a rifle user. The big idea is that if you can shadowstep your entire body, you should be able to shadowstep a little bullet. A darkshot (shadowshot is taken) has the ability to move a range attack from one location to another so it is hard to track it back to its source.

Range – You have to be in 900 range to activate dark shot abilities but when the bullet comes out of the darkness (so to speak) it can travel 1200.

Mechanic – You swap places with you target when stealing rather than teleporting to it

Rifle
1. Distraction Shot – You shoot into the darkness and bullets advance toward your target from random locations. Has a chance to cause confusion. You shoot at the target standing in front of you but the bullet comes from behind or the side of your target

2. Delayed Shot – You shoot into the darkness and the bullet emerges 1.5 seconds later. Applies a .5 Slow. You shoot and move but bullet comes from where you were and not where you are

3. Double Shot – You shoot a piercing shot that travels an additional 300 units after its strikes its primary target then it enters the darkness returning the point where it started and travels the same path again. Shoot and move the bullets keep coming

4. Detonation shot – You shoot an explosive bullet at your target that explodes after a short delay blasting fields and damaging your target and nearby foes. PBAOE

5. Destructive Shot – You shoot a bullet that adds to the duration of up to three conditions on the target (prioritizes non damaging conditions).

6. Diversion (Stealth skill) – Fire three shots that taunts (.5 sec), fears (.5 sec), and dazes (.5 sec)

Utilities (Flasks) –
Hot Tottie (heal) – Cures torment. Gain regeneration and swiftness. Gain extra health while moving. May cause intoxication if standing still.

Blinding Flask – Drink and ain light aura for X seconds / Clinging Darkness (flip over skill) – Ends light aura and creates a dark field at your feet

Fire Flask – Drink and gain fire aura / Flame lick (Flip over) End fire aura and belch flames to create a fire field in front of you

Frozen Flask – Drink and gain Frost Aura / Spin Dry (flip over skill) – End Frost Aura and spin off the ice creating water fields where the ice lands

Ionized Flask – Drink and gain shocking aura / Discharge (flip over skill) – End shocking aura. Your next attack will proc chain lightning

Elixir of Chaos (Elite) – You toss a noxious mixture of chemicals causing your target to hallucinate. The hallucinations do heavy damage but your target is healed if not defeated before the hallucination ends.

Minor Traits
Quick Shot – Gain Access to elixirs skill category and rifle weapon type. Stealing causes you swap places with your target.
Dizzying Speed – Gain super speed (short duration) when you gain swiftness
Dig Deep – Gain quickness (short duration) when you have less than 3 initiative

Adept Traits
Forceful Flanking – Gain might when you strike from behind or the side
Hurried Inspiration – Nearby allies lose movement impairing conditions when you crit
Fleeting Confusion – You gain swiftness from attacking confused foes and increase the duration of the confusion you inflict

Master Traits
Frenzied Firing – When wielding a rifle, successfully attacking from behind or the side has a chance (50%) to increase initiative regeneration
Rapid Ricochet – Ranged critical strikes bounces to nearby opponents
Malicious Elixirs – When under the effect of an aura your attacks inflict conditions (Fire Shield – Burning / Frost Aura – Chilled / Light Aura – Blindness / Shocking Aura – Vulnerability / Chaos Armor – Confusion)

Grandmaster Traits
Tactical Superiority – Your attacks have the chance to inflict slow when you are under the effects of quickness
Dark Pool – Ranged critical strikes create a dark field under you target
Rapid Recovery – When you use all your all your endurance you gain vigor, regeneration, and one other random boon.

This would be really weird and would be unfair to classes who can’t teleport back and have to walk around.
Mechanic – You swap places with you target when stealing rather than teleporting to it

These are really good skill fundaments imo:
2. Delayed Shot – You shoot into the darkness and the bullet emerges 1.5 seconds later. You shoot and move but bullet comes from where you were and not where you are
3. Double Shot – You shoot a piercing shot that travels an additional 300 units after its strikes its primary target then it enters the darkness returning the point where it started and travels the same path again. Shoot and move the bullets keep coming

In these cluttered fights it’s already too hard to spot anyone. So I wouldn’t like this. If there are 2 thieves like this, there is no way to find out which one is shooting you.:
1. Distraction Shot – You shoot into the darkness and bullets advance toward your target from random locations. Has a chance to cause confusion. You shoot at the target standing in front of you but the bullet comes from behind or the side of your target.

4. is OK.

The utilites don’t really fit. They feel like ele utilities and the elite like a mesmer one.(aura is not good on a thief, u dont want to facetank damage.)The idea of blowing up auras is great, however arenanet already started doing that on warrior. Hope they do it some more.

The next thief weapon should be dedicated to inflict condis unless they rework current weapons.

Kicker.8203:

…In these cluttered fights it’s already too hard to spot anyone. So I wouldn’t like this. If there are 2 thieves like this, there is no way to find out which one is shooting you…

This is actually the point of the entire spec. You are never where your opponent expects you to be. I assume the design challenge is to create a class that is evasive without relying on stealth. The spec I created relies on movement. You shoot you move. The focus should be on continually flanking you enemy. Hit them where they can’t hit you back.

With regard to the mechanic steal mechanic… I needed something that wouldn’t put you face to face with your enemy while you are holding a range weapon. Swapping places allows stealing but also adds some interesting game play because we already have things like traps and caltrops you can drop your foe in. Would also be interesting to use with refuge… There is a problem in PVE with bosses. If they are protected by defiance it can damage it but I don’t know if you should teleport to it like a regular steal or fail the steal all together. Gotta think that one though.

So the utilities are supposed to give thieves something that they don’t already have. In range the the utilities are really about the fields not the auras. However you wont always be in range so they are useful if you are not using a range weapon. We don’t have enough hps to tank so if we get hit make them pay. That’s what I was thinking at least.

Rifle skills 1 – 3 are for damage 4 & 5 are more for team support. Seems like most weapons are designed this way. Also there is supposed to be a really short slow on Delayed Shot which can be improved by 5 gonna try to edit that in now.

How should a thief be able to delay a bullet in time?
I think Delayed Shot would be something Anet was thinking as they had the concept in mind to give the Chronomancer the rifle. ^^
I understand the theme to distract the enemy but it doesn’t fit the thief theme how you implemented it.

And your Steal replacement: switching positions with the enemy is a really bad idea…. there would be so many trolls it wouldn’t be funny. You couldn’t even balance it by giving it a obvious cast to dodge with long charge, because thief has so much stealth. To balance this it would need to have a large charge time, an obvious telegraph AND has to put reveal on the thie at the beginning of the cast.

Kodama.6453:

How should a thief be able to delay a bullet in time?…

…And your Steal replacement: switching positions with the enemy is a really bad idea…. there would be so many trolls it wouldn’t be funny.

The thief is not delaying it in time… If you have to have an explanation the thief is “shadowstepping” the bullet backwards so it has to travel further and thus takes more time to get to the target.

I don’t see switching position to be any more problematic than scorpion wire. You can only use it against people that you are trying to kill. I don’t understand how it would be used to troll. In fact this skill was in GW1 minus the stealing.

I like your ideas, very creative and interesting. The elixirs you thought of seem pretty useful and amusing, and the concept of banking shots around your enemy to confuse them is pretty tight.

I think the new Steal ability (swap spots with your target) would be insanely overpowered though, in both PvP and WvW. Imagine in PvP swapping a defender off point and taking their place for an instant decap, or in WvW swapping an opponent off a tower wall and down into your friendly zerg for instant death.

It’s a cool idea, don’t get me wrong, but it would cause many unforeseeable issues.

Thuggernaut.1250:

..I think the new Steal ability (swap spots with your target) would be insanely overpowered though, in both PvP and WvW…

First thank you. Secondly, I’m still not convinced that swapping places is over powered. It’s powerful yes but it only consolidates abilities that we already have. We can pull with scorpion wire and shadowstep with a number of abilities. I see it more as keeping thieves as kings of mobility. I am willing to admit, however, that thief is my favorite class and perhaps I’m not exactly being balanced. I just thought it would be fun to use with pistol orshortbow with hidden thief equipped. Other classes got some really cool toys last go round and I think we should get something enviable too.

If there would be a skill switching positions it really NEEDS valid path to target. Just imagine some wvw scenarios, you could encounter an enemy, jump off a cliff where you can’t walk up again, so trapped on a little place, then switch positions and boom, the enemy is defenseless and has to die otherwise he can’t go anywhere. There are several places in wvw where this would be able to do. Or like already mentioned: switching positions with a defending npc on a tower wall, so you are instantly IN the tower. All would zerg wvw as thiefs just to not have to break the doors.

And we all know how thiefs hate this “no valid path to target”, but it really would be needed for something like this.

Kodama.6453:

If there would be a skill switching positions it really NEEDS valid path to target…

Agreed also if the person has stability or otherwise immune to pulls then the swap shouldn’t work. You would essentially just shadowstep to their location and they wouldn’t move.

Working the traits… be back soon.

Minor Traits
Quick Shot – Gain Access to elixirs skill category and rifle weapon type. Stealing causes you swap places with your target.
Dizzying Speed – Gain super speed (short duration) when you gain swiftness
Dig Deep – Gain quickness (short duration) when you have less than 3 initiative

Adept Traits
Forceful Flanking – Gain might when you strike from behind or the side
Hurried Inspiration – Nearby allies lose movement impairing conditions when you crit
Fleeting Confusion – You gain swiftness from attacking confused foes and increase the duration of the confusion you inflict

Master Traits
Frenzied Firing – When wielding a rifle, successfully attacking from behind or the side has a chance (50%) to increase initiative regeneration
Rapid ricochet – Ranged critical strikes bounces to nearby opponents
Malicious Elixirs – When under the effect of an aura your attacks inflict conditions (Fire Shield – Burning / Frost Aura – Chilled / Light Aura – Blindness / Shocking Aura – Vulnerability / Chaos Armor – Confusion)

Grandmaster Traits
Tactical Superiority – Your attacks have the chance to inflict slow when you are under the effects of quickness
Dark Pool – Ranged critical strikes create a dark field under you target
Rapid Recovery – When you use all your all your endurance you gain vigor, regeneration, and one other random boon.

nopoet.2960:

Thuggernaut.1250:

..I think the new Steal ability (swap spots with your target) would be insanely overpowered though, in both PvP and WvW…

First thank you. Secondly, I’m still not convinced that swapping places is over powered. It’s powerful yes but it only consolidates abilities that we already have. We can pull with scorpion wire and shadowstep with a number of abilities. I see it more as keeping thieves as kings of mobility. I am willing to admit, however, that thief is my favorite class and perhaps I’m not exactly being balanced. I just thought it would be fun to use with pistol orshortbow with hidden thief equipped. Other classes got some really cool toys last go round and I think we should get something enviable too.

There is another reason against it. It’s the same as displacement, displacement was removed from the game because it was causing too many bugs.

Dug this up after seeing post about the new thief spec being a slow rifle user; ugh. It doesn’t have to be that way.

This spec, that I now think of as the Dart, is kinda the anti sniper. Speed as evasion, no spikes but pure sustained damage. There elixirs and add traits support. Just wanted to bring to everyone’s attention that there are a lot of good ideas on this forum that use rifle that aren’t snipers.

I hope you guys will repost them so we can see them all again. I can’t be the only one that thinks standing still at 1500 units away is boring.

No, it doesn’t. There are plenty of ideas out there that feature the rifle as being high-octane/non-sniper (cough-see-my-signature-for-what-could-have-been-cough).

That said, this proposal is pretty crazy busted. The prospect of permanent super speed and quickness on yourself and permanent slow on your enemy when using perplexity runes via Dizzying Speed + Dig Deep + Fleeting Confusion + Malicious Elixirs + Destructive Shot, plus interrupts just makes this full-on silly.

Seems just a little bit too difficult to deal with since the re-application process of all of these effects is just so easy.

DeceiverX.8361:

No, it doesn’t. There are plenty of ideas out there that feature the rifle as being high-octane/non-sniper (cough-see-my-signature-for-what-could-have-been-cough).

That said, this proposal is pretty crazy busted. The prospect of permanent super speed and quickness on yourself and permanent slow on your enemy when using perplexity runes via Dizzying Speed + Dig Deep + Fleeting Confusion + Malicious Elixirs + Destructive Shot, plus interrupts just makes this full-on silly.

Seems just a little bit too difficult to deal with since the re-application process of all of these effects is just so easy.

First off I’m actually a fan of the Deadeye. The class mechanic is a bit complex but it is one of the suggestions that I hoped would be re-posted.

Second it’s so cool that you actually thought though a build and saw some of the synergies but come on man, you know that there will be cool downs on those traits. I purposely didn’t put any numbers in my suggestion because those things have to be balanced and I wanted to present a high level concept without getting into the weeds. Just assume that perma anything would be balanced out. Although I will give you Dig Deep. It probably shouldn’t trigger unless you’ve used all of your ini.

Thirdly, the stealth ability is powerful but the duration is so short it only really functions as an interrupt and not a control. It’s really there to help with breakbars.

If the idea is to have a steal skill that isn’t based on closing with the opponent, what about simply reversing it? Make it a skill that works in melee and then moves the thief away from the target. Call it “Grab and Run!” or something.

Regarding the utilities, I’m inclined to agree with what others have said – they feel a bit too elementalist-y. Personally, given the “where are my attacks coming from” theme, I’d be tempted to have illusion skills to up the confusion – for instance, you could have a skill that generates an illusion that appears to be firing at the target, with a flipover skill that allows you to teleport to the illusion.

Only issue with swapping places on steal is that it would make trapper thieves insanely more annoying. Two trapper thieves could then not only spike from stealth, but move the target 2400 units from their group at the same time. Pretty funny to commander snipe for a while maybe, but trust me, that will get old REAL fast xD

Also, it doesn’t fit the theme of keeping someone in the dark as to your position, since if they get randomly ported they know the thief is where they were just a second ago.

draxynnic.3719

:…Regarding the utilities, I’m inclined to agree with what others have said – they feel a bit too elementalist-y. …

So let me tell you where that comes from. My first character was a thief. I didn’t touch another class until I was level 80 for a while. I played warriors, guardians, necos and the thing that struck me was how much more effort was required to play a thief. There are situation when you play other classes where you feel like you are not being efficient unless you are surrounded by 3 or 4 enemies at a time. So anyway when I was daydreaming about a elite spec I had this picture of a guy, from the B squad, that excelled not because of natural talent but because he worked really really hard.

In my head the Dart is this guy. He’s running around the battle field at full tilt using every trick he knows to get the upper hand. If he lets up even just a little he’s going to die. It’s exhausting… and when you are exhausted… you need a drink. That drink became the flask utilities. The liquid in those flasks might be a bit magical. It really doesn’t seem like a stretch next to engineer elixirs.

It was the best thing I could think of to provide the class with a defense if they get caught that was really an offense. The Malicious Elixirs trait just skewes them to more to offense.

And to the idea that swapping places is to powerful it seems like everyone is taking issue with the pull portion more than the teleport. To that the wiki says there are seven weapon skills, three utility skills and three elite skill that can pull. I think the devs have already decided that pulls are ok. You know you want it and it’s ok. Don’t let what other people may think stop you from doing something that will feel so good.

Yes, there are a few skills that pull, but there are no skills that swap.

Magnetic Leap “pulls” the user, so that doesn’t really count. Cyclone, Temporal Curtain, Glyph of Tides, and all of the elites listed (which include an underwater elite, which you’re unlikely to face in a PvP situation) are relatively minor repositions.

The remaining pull skills all have two things in common:

First, they pull the target to the user. A swap allows more opportunity for exploitation than a simple ‘pull target to me’ skill.

Second, they have a big tell that warns the target that they’re about to be pulled. In some cases, this is through first landing another attack. In some cases, it’s a projectile that has to go past the foe and then come back, pulling them. Others aren’t projectiles per se, but there’s still a graphical effect on the target that can last long enough for them to respond. In Grasping Shadow, the tell is that there is a noticeable gap between when the revenant teleports back and when the pull occurs.

If the swap has some noticeable counterplay, it could work, but not if there’s the possibility for it to come out of nowhere. Maybe, given the theme of portals that this suggestion has, a Steal could result in a portal appearing, and if the target is still within the portal’s area after a certain delay, they get pulled through the portal to the thief’s original location. That said, if we’re playing with portals already, an alternative way to make it work is to make it an actual portal, like the mesmer portal. You shadowstep to a target, and for a certain period, there’s a portal linking the point you started from and the point where your target was. If you’re stealthed, the enemy can’t tell whether you’re now near them or whether you’ve retreated back through the portal. Meanwhile, it might be possible for allies to also jump through the portal.

Regarding the elixirs: I do actually like the effects, however I don’t think they really fit to your concept. The concept is based around creating confusion as to where your character actually is, and then the utility skills are about flashy elemental effects. From my read, this specialisation is taking the profession more into the territory of mesmer-style magic (more so than thief already does by default) – my inclination would be to embrace that and provide a bunch of skills that introduce even more confusion as to where you really are. Illusions would be one way to achieve this.

draxynnic.3719:

..If the swap has some noticeable counterplay, it could work, but not if there’s the possibility for it to come out of nowhere. ..

Ok thank you. I understand now. Here’s how it we fix it: Trigger hook and tackle on steal.

When you steal you drop a reel at you old location and attach a hook to your target at the new location. There is a visible chain between the two. The reel will start pulling your target slowly at first then more quickly the closer it gets to the reel. Your target can escape the hook by dodging off, destroying the reel or having other protection against pulls.

Hmm thanks draxynnic this actually sounds more fun than just swapping places but I’m pretty attached to the elixirs. I’ll give it some thought though.

nopoet.2960:

First off I’m actually a fan of the Deadeye. The class mechanic is a bit complex but it is one of the suggestions that I hoped would be re-posted.

Second it’s so cool that you actually thought though a build and saw some of the synergies but come on man, you know that there will be cool downs on those traits. I purposely didn’t put any numbers in my suggestion because those things have to be balanced and I wanted to present a high level concept without getting into the weeds. Just assume that perma anything would be balanced out. Although I will give you Dig Deep. It probably shouldn’t trigger unless you’ve used all of your ini.

Thirdly, the stealth ability is powerful but the duration is so short it only really functions as an interrupt and not a control. It’s really there to help with breakbars.

Thank you. I do hope that if the rifle is our next elite spec, it does end up being of the more trickster/gunner style than just a stealth-camping sniper. The Deadeye was a fun concept to develop out of it just simply being so different, and I think that its reworked mechanic seems more complex on paper than in actuality – it was also a bit intentional to try and shake up steal from just being “press button and teleport” to require a little more thought and combat investment.

Back to your spec, I didn’t really even need to think of a build when I listed off some concerns, though. Those were just the minor traits, the condi traits, and some consideration to what happens in PvP environments with one skill of the profession weapon just trying to play into the biggest strengths you made available within the line. As for implementation, it may or may not even be strong, but without specifics there’s really little way to know.

The thing to note is that ICD’s aren’t always a fun mechanic. I know we’re pretty far from this in the current state of the game, but it makes for much more interesting and fun play to know precisely when things will be able to into effect/trigger/etc. It’s reasonable for things like opponents’ major cooldowns, but when you start getting into managing every ~5s cooldown in your opponent’s kit and your own, the game becomes a lot less fun very easily when trying to win a given fight.

As someone who’s taken the time to try and balance out an idea, I’d suggest looking into other mechanics in the game (particularly ones you borrow) and how they interact with your spec. For example, I think Malicious Elixirs, and subsequently maybe elixirs themselves, needs to be changed; aura-share ele is a very strong build, and having the effects of a utility-type-bonus skill come from someone else would enable the spec to pick other utilities while still gaining the very potent effects of the trait. Extended condition duration would allow Bewildering Ambush or Spider Venom stacks to become excessive quite easily. These all need to be accounted for when making such a proposal balanced.

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Further, I do suggest starting with some general-estimate cooldown/duration ideas. I didn’t bother with skill coefficients or necessarily specific/balanced stacks/details until later on in my proposal when I started crunching numbers, but basic cooldowns or better descriptors to portray generally where you’re coming from help a lot when trying to understand the idea better. Descriptors like “short duration” and the likes are pretty vague; some may think short-duration quickness could be 2 or 3 seconds, while some may think of it closer to 1. In the context of a trait like Dig Deep, for example, the differences between .5s, 1s, and 2s are pretty massive, as the latter two could enable permanent quickness very easily, while the former, not so much, but may in fact be too weak at that amount. And then, again re-apply how boon interactions work with the rest of the game; does this become overpowered in a build running boon duration? Boonsharing in a group or x/y/z sizes?

As I’ve made apparent, there’s a ton to consider, but that’s also why you ask for discussion on these forums; you’re not going to get it right on the first try. I had friends preview the Deadeye and discussed it with them early on before the suggestion made it to the forums. I threw random trait and gear combinations together to make sure there wasn’t anything broken at times, and tried to iterate as much as possible beforehand. You’re very likely going to not consider some seemingly-insignificant edge case that breaks the build/spec entirely that someone else will, like what happened with the Chronobunker at release of HoT. Getting feedback from other people helps alleviate these issues before they start, but getting feedback to make changes requires a bit more specific information. Start generic -5s boon duration intervals and 3s condi duration intervals or something;, then iterate over this, making slight decreases each time (Quickness for example would be way too strong on these durations in this spec). Once you think you’ve got it, let the community take over the rest; if 5s of swiftness is OP and someone explains why, and how 4s would be otherwise fine, you’re now in a better spot and add another level of understanding to your spec, which might make you see things elsewhere differently.

I had fun brainstorming an elite spec that used rifle and chemicals too!
Maybe I should post it and see what people think. I’m going to call it Saboteur, just so it can be found in the topic list. I’m excited about sharing it because of its mechanics.