Guild Wars 2

Yes, that’s right! Another fancy “F” button to play with! Only this time, it can actually save your life!

Imagine yourself about to engage a very strong opponent. In the past, you know you’re just too fragile to go against him. But not anymore! Your Thief has been upgraded with the state-of-the art feature known as the F3 button!

What does it do? I’m glad you asked!

When F3 is set to active, the following occurs:
Every attack that hits you will be a “glancing” strike at the cost of 10 Endurance to yourself.

Why is the Thief able to take twice as much damage as usual? Well, it’s not. But using the Thief’s natural dexterity and agility, it can move and position itself in order to cause the foe’s strikes to “glance” off its armor, so it will take twice as many hits to do as much damage as it normally would.

Why would you want this to be a toggle? For several reasons. First of all, you may not want to lose endurance when hit, especially if it’s a weak attack. Secondly, there may be balancing issues to consider. Since it is a defensive mode, there are those (AKA: other professions) who may wish to reduce the defensive Thief’s outgoing damage (between 10-25%) or perhaps add 1 extra initiative to the cost of skills. Or, you could even make it a toggle between Offense and Defense in which the offensive mode would grant bonuses to attack. Either way, it’s just another imagining to add depth and viability to the Thief.

Thoughts?

Just for your information the glancing strikes we currently have ingame trough weakness aren’t just a 50% damage reduction, they turn a hit into a glancing strike that does half of its normal non crit damage, that means what would have been crits now deal only 25% of their normal damage and don’t proc passives like sigill of air or fire.

So depending on the crit chance and the impact of fire and air sigills on the burst the damage reduction could be way higher than just 50%, while doing as good as nothing against condition builds.

Maxodon.5243:

while doing as good as nothing against condition builds.

This is the real problem. It takes like three burning stacks two seconds to down most Thieves and there’s almost nothing you can do about it.

We need fixes for that.

Hey, what’s stopping this new defensive mode from halving (or even negating) condition damage at the cost of Endurance?

1 tick of each condition for 10 Endurance

After all, Thieves have been building an immunity to such conditions over years of training. Most specifically, the deadly Iocane Powder!

Wow, this is the second post I read from you (I just read the F4 implementation) and I’m again impressed by how much potential it has despite having a trolling attitude to it

Um, I would like to enhance on this idea and propose F3 being a toggle that can’t be used along with F4 (stealth toggle) if those 2 systems are implemented. So if you choose to stealth, you lose your sustain which makes perfect sense.

Furthermore, toggling the F3 skill will continuously drain 10 endurance per 3 seconds to prevent leaving the toggle on, like you suggested. However, how about instead of granting “perma weakness” to everyone else, it could lower the endurance cost of dodge by 50% and cleanse 1 condition per 3 seconds (just like shadow rejuvenation).

This would be far easier to implement, synergizes with Daredevil and evasive thief playstyle, AND greatly benefit the long-forgotten Pistol mainhand builds.

I’m not a fan of adding more keys to find room for. I can’t just discount an idea because I don’t like it though but I’d rather these F key ideas posted recently be a new Acrobatics mechanic. Since having more keys to manage is a play style, let it be something to chose.