Guild Wars 2

I know it’s most likely to late, but what if teef would get a form like shroud/celestial. I’m talking about Shadow Form. Assassins had it in guildwars 1 and it was an amazing elite to have. But what of they make a few changes to it and for every boon currently on the teef when he entered into shadowform gave a 2% damage mitigation with a 1% damage reduction.

Anyone else think something like this would be a real great Form to have?

I would like a thief form for when the thief is revealed

IchigoHatake.5098:

I would like a thief form for when the thief is revealed

Wow didn’t even think about reveal. I would totally love a Form that would only pop on reveal especially when you get a 20 second stealth trap reveal.

IchigoHatake.5098:

I would like a thief form for when the thief is revealed

This would be a great idea for the next spec.

Shadow Form.

You become invulnerable to all damage and cannot be inflicted with a condition.

It was a GW1 skill.

It was a GW1 skill.

Kain Francois.4328:

Shadow Form.

You become invulnerable to all damage and cannot be inflicted with a condition.

It was a GW1 skill.

It was a GW1 skill.

Yeah, but it cant be that op in gw2 because all you going to hear is mimimimimimi

Elite Enchantment Spell. (5…18…21 seconds.) Enemy spells cannot target you. Gain 5 damage reduction for each Assassin enchantment on you. You cannot deal more than 5…21…25 damage with a single skill or attack.

Edit: PvP version. also: 5mana 1sec cast 30sec CD

Elite Enchantment Spell. (5…13…15 seconds.) Hostile spells targeting you fail, and attacks against you miss. End effect: lose all but 5…41…50 Health.

i’d love to see an elite spec focused on making the thief tanky, bringing shadow form back (if only as a name). could be kinda like celestial form, only we fill it by mitigating damage (every time someone misses an attack because of blind or evade, or you interrupt an attack, it fills up). can’t say i’m sure what the form itself would do, but i wouldn’t want to step on necro’s toes and have it basically be a proxy health bar, unless we kept our weapon skills while in it, but then it would be kind of boring.

Shadow Form: Activates only when you are revealed.
Passive: Apply blinds in a small aoe

Abilities:

Turn into a shadow (kinda like mist form): become a shadow on the ground, cannot be targeted by players, immune to attacks, cannot attack, remove all condition currently on player

Shadowstep: switch places with an enemy and blind them

Shadowbind: bind the shadows of all enemies in an aoe, immobolizing them

Shadowburst: charge an attack to do massive aoe dmg, takes you out of shadow form.

RobotiClaw.7534:

Kain Francois.4328:

Shadow Form.

You become invulnerable to all damage and cannot be inflicted with a condition.

It was a GW1 skill.

It was a GW1 skill.

Yeah, but it cant be that op in gw2 because all you going to hear is mimimimimimi

It had self inflicted debuffs on top of it though and using it in pvp was dangerous if poor timing.

Realistically us and necro’s are the only classes without some form of invulnerability.. It’s why were so dependent on vamp runes, and why our burst is becoming more useless.

Ele: Earth 5 on focus, mist form.
Ranger: Signet of stone, Protect Me
Warrior: Endure Pain (trait and skill)
Engineer: Elixir S (trait and skill)
Mesmer: Distortion
Guard: Renewed Focus

Shadow form on reveal would make complete sense. Like your stealth hasn’t completely worn off. I like the pulsing blind idea, or giving attacks a chance to blind. I’d really like alacrity as well, and maybe reduced condi damage since we have the lowest HP pool.

IchigoHatake.5098:

Shadow Form: Activates only when you are revealed.
Passive: Apply blinds in a small aoe

Abilities:

Turn into a shadow (kinda like mist form): become a shadow on the ground, cannot be targeted by players, immune to attacks, cannot attack, remove all condition currently on player

Shadowstep: switch places with an enemy and blind them

Shadowbind: bind the shadows of all enemies in an aoe, immobolizing them

Shadowburst: charge an attack to do massive aoe dmg, takes you out of shadow form.

can we, like, have a discussion on the future of thief that doesn’t eventually have a post with suggestions so preposterously OP they make me question the validity of the discussion in the first place?

keep it level headed, people. look at what is considered ok in-game already before suggesting something that’s basically ultra-mode mist form.

Honestly it sounds like a centerpiece of another elite spec. Daredevil is very much about mitigation specifically because they don’t want daredevil mitigation to stack with future elite specs. I’d say a new elite spec could be much more offensively focused with the primary element of risk being swapping out steal for shadow form.

Given GW2 mechanics, I’d see shadow form working very similarly to the necro’s form, with a twist. In stead of being a separate hp bar like the necro, you’d gain immunity, become revealed, and all your attacks would target enemy resources rather than HP for the duration. So, in shadow form you wouldn’t deal or take damage. In stead you’d directly assault core class mechanisms, or directly debilitate foes in a non-damaging manner.

You’d directly stack cooldowns with each hit on to:
Guardian virtues
Engineer toolbelt skills
Mesmer shatters
Ele attunements
Ranger pet skills/swaps

And you would directly reduce with each hit:
Necro life force (or the necro’s HP if they are in form)
Warrior adrenaline
Revnant energy
Thief initiative

In PvE you would directly reduce break bars, even when the break bar is invulnerable, and against player pets/mobs without break bars you’d stack debilitating non-damage conditions like slow/frost/cripple etc.

As for how to charge the form, I like the idea of having it powered by “reverse adrenaline” and gaining charge whenever you dodge, stealth, or shadowstep while in combat, and similarly emptying by itself outside of combat like adrenaline.

Amazing suggestions everyone

Sounds great buuuut all of this death shadow business kinda seems more up necros alley x.×.

SlayerSixx.5763:

Sounds great buuuut all of this death shadow business kinda seems more up necros alley x.×.

Idk i think teefs going into the shadows seems pretty legit. We are Teefs afterall

That’s the problem. If you want to look at it thematically, thieves aren’t characterised by their stealth. They’re characterised by their subtlety and/or deftness of their fighting style. Mobile, quick, accurate and precise. The stealth just feeds into that. Having them run around with gray/black smoke and blowing things up kinda looks like…..

Necros death shroud.

If you want to suggest something tied to stealth (I have no idea why anyone would want to do this, what with all of the reveal flying around), have it tied to this sort of stealthy teleport barrage. Have the thief start in a location and, like S/D, teleport towards their target, strike, drop two markers before/after/during the strike and have the thief teleport to the marker of his choosing, stealth and then repeat the flurry until he either misses, is blocked, or is blinded. Each two successive markers placed have even less range and even less duration but increased stealth duration and damage per strike. If the thief is fighting more than one enemy he can choose to continue and follow up on that new target with a 50% increase in damage (after all of the boosts) that should one shot the next enemy. The increasing ramp up of damage is meant to reward the thief for actually landing all of these hits, but counterplay, aside from guessing when a stealthed target is about to strike, lies in smashing the markers or using some of the copious amounts of reveal that will be running around in the game in less than 48 hours.

Thoughts?

SlayerSixx.5763:

That’s the problem. If you want to look at it thematically, thieves aren’t characterised by their stealth. They’re characterised by their subtlety and/or deftness of their fighting style. Mobile, quick, accurate and precise. The stealth just feeds into that. Having them run around with gray/black smoke and blowing things up kinda looks like…..

Necros death shroud.

If you want to suggest something tied to stealth (I have no idea why anyone would want to do this, what with all of the reveal flying around), have it tied to this sort of stealthy teleport barrage. Have the thief start in a location and, like S/D, teleport towards their target, strike, drop two markers before/after/during the strike and have the thief teleport to the marker of his choosing, stealth and then repeat the flurry until he either misses, is blocked, or is blinded. Each two successive markers placed have even less range and even less duration but increased stealth duration and damage per strike. If the thief is fighting more than one enemy he can choose to continue and follow up on that new target with a 50% increase in damage (after all of the boosts) that should one shot the next enemy. The increasing ramp up of damage is meant to reward the thief for actually landing all of these hits, but counterplay, aside from guessing when a stealthed target is about to strike, lies in smashing the markers or using some of the copious amounts of reveal that will be running around in the game in less than 48 hours.

Thoughts?

Thieves are very much characterized thematically by smoke, dust, and magical shadow effects. Stealth is part of that, but even the completely non-stealth daredevil retained a massive amount of smoke/shadow aesthetics in its profession and skill effect art.

As for Shadow form, it comes from the precursor to the GW2 thief, the GW1 assassin, who was actually a class without any stealth mechanics at all (as stealth did not exist in GW1) but similarly leaned very heavily on obfuscation as a theme in the form of smoke and teleportation style effects.

I wouldn’t consider the black blurs they do to be smokey. I’ll agree that theives do use shadow magic, but to turn thief into another tanky shadow based caster that nukes whole parties isn’t the way this class should go. If that’s what you want, necro and reaper await. Hell, even mesmer suits the stealthy caster role better than thief would.

Daredevil may have retained the aesthetic, but the theme behind it (and behind most of thief’s skills in general) is speed and evasion. S/D (and staff to a lesser extent) is dedicated entirely to that. We now have TWO trait lines dedicated to evasion.

I understand the nostalgia a good game could bring about (I was too young and broke to enjoy GW1), but trying to bring a game’s mechanics with entirely different functions and mechanics around to a game like GW2 is exactly what we SHOULDNT be doing. We need less homogenization of classes while still aiming to make them different while certain game modes obviously cater more to certain classes. I understand everyone’s desire to make thief better, but making them like other classes isn’t the way to go. Why not try suggesting something that plays on thief’s strengths (or weaknesses, without making them facetankers).

SlayerSixx.5763:

I wouldn’t consider the black blurs they do to be smokey. I’ll agree that theives do use shadow magic, but to turn thief into another tanky shadow based caster that nukes whole parties isn’t the way this class should go. If that’s what you want, necro and reaper await. Hell, even mesmer suits the stealthy caster role better than thief would.

Daredevil may have retained the aesthetic, but the theme behind it (and behind most of thief’s skills in general) is speed and evasion. S/D (and staff to a lesser extent) is dedicated entirely to that. We now have TWO trait lines dedicated to evasion.

I understand the nostalgia a good game could bring about (I was too young and broke to enjoy GW1), but trying to bring a game’s mechanics with entirely different functions and mechanics around to a game like GW2 is exactly what we SHOULDNT be doing. We need less homogenization of classes while still aiming to make them different while certain game modes obviously cater more to certain classes. I understand everyone’s desire to make thief better, but making them like other classes isn’t the way to go. Why not try suggesting something that plays on thief’s strengths (or weaknesses, without making them facetankers).

Nobody is recommending that. People have thrown around different ideas for something that thief needs (survivability and a way to handle reveal), and while they’re calling it shadow form, suggestions are for something that fits thief and gw2.

And who said necro is the only class that can have shadowy effects? It’s not like we’re saying to just slap death shroud on a thief. It could look totally different, like a blur/phasing effect.

But have it play exactly like necro, but more mobility?

Zodryn.4216:

Shadow form on reveal would make complete sense. Like your stealth hasn’t completely worn off. I like the pulsing blind idea, or giving attacks a chance to blind. I’d really like alacrity as well, and maybe reduced condi damage since we have the lowest HP pool.

Lots of great ideas in this thread that I agree with, especially this one. An Elite spec focused on buff on reveal could be something in the future…

SlayerSixx.5763:

But have it play exactly like necro, but more mobility?

One person suggested an actual form with alternate skills, only one of which even deals damage. Most other recommendations are more or less just buffs on reveal. Nobody suggested necro with more mobility. No clue where you see that.