Guild Wars 2

With the new Heart of Thorns content each profession is having their F# skills changed up a bit in addition to the new Elite Specialisations, so the question is: How do we think ArenaNet will change the Steal mechanic?
(cause the thief’s unique mechanic at this point is clearly not reliable short distance telportation, stealth or rapid attacks)

My guess is a seemingly invisible wire they attach to a target with a shadowstep which allows them to CC that target at will once (with a fail state repercussion to give the thief a reason to pop the skill if their target has defiant).
It focuses on the Thief’s chief idea of single target fighting, is useless if a better equipped class kills the target first and doesn’t require the devs to design any additional features into their obvious favourite class.

While you are stealthed press f3 to activate surprise attack.

Active – unstealth yourself and launch at your opponent with super speed. On impact with target cast fear as you just scared the poo out of them.

As we are thieves and we are supposed to steal, the logical evolution should be to convert the class into “The Banker” that use the long speeches about “Growing”, “Debt”, “Markets Expansion” etc as principal offensive an defensive mechanics.

The new weapon shouldn’t matter at all while it provokes “torment” and “confusion” 5 stacks each skill.

The elite traits line should have something like “hide behind politicians” you stealth yourself behind a Lord when your health reach the threshold (90%). And probably “take the money and run”, you steal all the money in foes around you and shadow step until someone else takes the blame.

Something like that, yeah.

EDIT: typos

I think it’s reasonable to predict there will be an F3 skill, maybe even an F4. That would explain why they needed to change from F1 as a toggle to F1 and F2 splitting the function of Steal — they want to add more to the mechanic and needed us used to multiple F key use.

Whether they will still be “steal” focused functions is another question. Oh I do hope that next week we get the Thief reveal, even if it’s overshadowed a bit by the PAX stuff.

I think it’d be interesting to see a complete overhaul, but who knows.

Yeah, Steal hasn’t held up so well over the last three years. You could keep bits of it (the shadowstepping), but it should be overhauled into something different as a profession mechanic.

What does a daredevil do. Swing on rope? Maybe we’ll get a better scorpion wire mechanic.

That’s an interesting topic. Daredevil do extremely reckless things. Steal is pretty reckless but not Daredevil Reckless. I am going to say our new F#3 skill will be disarming the opponent. That would take Stealing to another level. At that point, not amount of reveal could make them more dangerous, it should be like 5 seconds.

I would like to see slide tackles that causes knockdowns, or very dirty tricks like throw sand or Quicksand trap.

The F1 skill will be changed to YOLO!

Kocoff.7582:

That’s an interesting topic. Daredevil do extremely reckless things. Steal is pretty reckless but not Daredevil Reckless. I am going to say our new F#3 skill will be disarming the opponent. That would take Stealing to another level. At that point, not amount of reveal could make them more dangerous, it should be like 5 seconds.

I would like to see slide tackles that causes knockdowns, or very dirty tricks like throw sand or Quicksand trap.

Nah. Steal now makes the thief unarmed to provide a better show by giving its gear and strength to the enemy for +100% magic find when you kill the foe.

Looking at the Warrior adrenaline change, it is only fair that our Initiative should have a based max of 15 initiatives and remove/replace Preparedness from our trait.

Then they should increase the initiative cost of offensive skills and reduce the cost of defensive skills. Example; in D/P, Black Powder should cost 2 while Heartseeker would cost 6. This will also give P/P more defensive options instead of burning all initiatives by using only 2 skills (BP+Unload).

The point is, they should really look at the Thief mechanic as a whole instead of focusing on just one.

While other professions can use all 5 skills at engagement, Thief are limited due to the cost of skills, the low max initiatives, and the shared cooldown while initiatives recharges. This mechanic needs to be balanced first.

Once expansion is out, there’ll be a lock on the thief class. If you activate the thief, you won’t be able to play any other characters ‘til next expansion, if you don’t you won’t be able to play the thief ’til next expansion.

Every time you attempt steal, there’s a small chance you actually steal items and money from the opponent. There’s also a fail-RNG which will deal damage and confusion to you. Economy will collapse and the richest players in the game will be thieves.

To compensate this OP form, damage will be lowered even more but steal range will be increased to 6000

yolo swaggins.2570:

The F1 skill will be changed to YOLO!

So if we yolo what do we do man. Like isn’t a daredevil just a berserker who isn’t high and likes to climb kitten instead of kill kitten.

sebradle.7034:

yolo swaggins.2570:

The F1 skill will be changed to YOLO!

So if we yolo what do we do man.

going by thief’s current state… die.

kitten widget.9301:

As we are thieves and we are supposed to steal, the logical evolution should be to convert the class into “The Banker” that use the long speeches about “Growing”, “Debt”, “Markets Expansion” etc as principal offensive an defensive mechanics.

The new weapon shouldn’t matter at all while it provokes “torment” and “confusion” 5 stacks each skill.

The elite traits line should have something like “hide behind politicians” you stealth yourself behind a Lord when your health reach the threshold (90%). And probably “take the money and run”, you steal all the money in foes around you and shadow step until someone else takes the blame.

Something like that, yeah.

EDIT: typos

I’m sorry, but I don’t want to see another profession get shouts with HoT. It would get tiresome. Otherwise, if the thief summoned minions to spread his propaganda, and set up a black market, I’d be okay with that.

My guess for thief profession mechanic would be something similar to the Assassins Promise skill from GW1.

The skill marks a target for kill. if it dies u regain initiative + remove cooldowns + some other effect (boons/condition clear). So u are ready for the next fight as long as your health is still good. Most likely some of those effects can be changed with the new traits.

The name of the of the elite specialization would be Assassin.

just an idea

Maybe it will be the “Shadow Form”… grants you unlimited dodges for X seconds OR grants you X amount of toughness for Y seconds OR deal X% less damage while in the form but take Y less damage.

If it is a staff… (just ripping off other games here… you know monks…) perhaps we will get something like the ele’s F-keys, where we would go into an attunement…

I, personally would like the F-key to be “Win”, makes this nice animation of “YOU WIN” that looks like a firework parade and then logs you out – so you know, you can go and play other games since you just won the game. It will make me feel even better getting my daily log in reward (see attached).

Who. Knows.

sebradle.7034:

yolo swaggins.2570:

The F1 skill will be changed to YOLO!

So if we yolo what do we do man. Like isn’t a daredevil just a berserker who isn’t high and likes to climb kitten instead of kill kitten.

We still port to the targeted ennemy but unequip every armor, trinket and weapons by doing so.
Or better we drop them in the location of activation

Tabootrinket.2631:

sebradle.7034:

yolo swaggins.2570:

The F1 skill will be changed to YOLO!

So if we yolo what do we do man. Like isn’t a daredevil just a berserker who isn’t high and likes to climb kitten instead of kill kitten.

We still port to the targeted ennemy but unequip every armor, trinket and weapons by doing so.
Or better we drop them in the location of activation

Then we scream “Parkour” and do this.

kitten widget.9301:

As we are thieves and we are supposed to steal, the logical evolution should be to convert the class into “The Banker” that use the long speeches about “Growing”, “Debt”, “Markets Expansion” etc as principal offensive an defensive mechanics.

The new weapon shouldn’t matter at all while it provokes “torment” and “confusion” 5 stacks each skill.

The elite traits line should have something like “hide behind politicians” you stealth yourself behind a Lord when your health reach the threshold (90%). And probably “take the money and run”, you steal all the money in foes around you and shadow step until someone else takes the blame.

Something like that, yeah.

EDIT: typos

omfg that was funny as kitten dude. lmaooooooooo
wow 110/10

Steal gets moved into utility skill and the F1-F4 become a on-the-fly rearrangement of our stats, pulling points out of toughness and vitality to buff power and condition damage.

Give the thief a higher base vitality and lower power and some obvious signs to powering up and it’d be golden. It still fots our mentality of hit hard and fast and gives us more survivability and keeps us on the knife’s edge that some people quite enjoy. Also new trait line can give us 1 second of distortion when powering down as an option.

sebradle.7034:

We still port to the targeted ennemy but unequip every armor, trinket and weapons by doing so.
Or better we drop them in the location of activation

Then we scream “Parkour” and do this.[/quote]

And once we master Daredevil we can do this! (click on the picture cuz the site messed it up)

Assuming Daredevil and the staff are legit, I’m guessing we’d be trading steal (an engagement skill that potentially sets up the target) for some sort of disengagement skill that doesn’t grant stealth.

Staff seems like it would be a melee AoE weapon, and the name daredevil seems like a flavor less focused on stealthy stabby and more focused of showy things like firearms/blunt damage/explosives that the base thief spec has a little of, but doesn’t really build around.

Concussive retreat – Explode a concussion grenade at your location, blasting nearby enemies forward 600, and launching yourself backward 800.

or, possibly f1-f4 versions of the skill with different conditions (f1 for knockback, f2 for a long cripple, f3 for fear, etc.)

I also wouldn’t be suprised if ricochet was moved to the spec, as p/p seems a bit more “daredevil” than “thief” and of course various traits added to buff the new F1 with some CDR, additional conditions, heal, damage, etc.

Finally, I’d assume our new utilities are flavored around sustain/lifesteal based melee so they’d naturally synergize with thief builds that stack lifesteal for sustain. Melee lifesteal sustain is pretty unique to the thief, we have a heal skill (well two, but the venom sucks because venoms) two traits for it, and our initiative mechanic allows us to spam multi-hit skills to use it more efficiently than other classes. Additionally, lifesteal sustain requires you to stay in combat and hit people, which seems in keeping with the “daredevil” theme. I’d assume some sort of timed +lifesteal aura, something that grants protection, and probably a condition purge with no extra benefits so it’s more powerful than shadowstep, and an elite that does for melee what daggerstorm does for ranged. +Stability, short range Melee aoe damage, and close PBAoE pulsing blind in stead of reflect.

Basically, a lot of thing that flip the thief from being more effective versus single targets and less against mobs to being more effective at multiple targets and less against singles due to the nature of lifesteal.

Having played a lifesteal build (in open world content, and certain instanced content where it’s actually viable) I can say that the biggest thing you need when your lifesteal tank starts breaking is a quick and reliable disengage so you can blow a stealth or otherwise retreat to avoid death in the middle of the massive group of mobs you rounded up and nail them with ranged shortbow attacks to heal back up enough to dive back in. To get that currently you have to give up SoM for withdraw (which kills the build) or a use shadowstep/roll for initiative in a somewhat unintuitive manner.

Also, the only weapons that can currently play such a build are d/d deathblossom spam, or s/p pistol whip spam, both of which are kind of one trick ponies when used this way. A melee AoE focused staff bar, on the other hand, would be a perfect alternative for enabling that playstyle in a way that wouldn’t also require anet to nerf the single target potential of dagger or sword.

Putting that disengage on the f1 slot would allow that playstyle without requiring the player to take specific utilities, and would allow it to be used more frequently without needing to nerf the powerful secondary effects of the disengage tools thieves already have.

Due to the nature of p/p it would also make sense to move pistol traits there as p/p would play a lot better with a f1 disengage than a f1 shadowstep.

Bloodyx.5946:

omfg that was funny as kitten dude. lmaooooooooo
wow 110/10

I wasn’t pretending to be fun, did you seen some “xD” or “:)” or laugh over the post?, I was just being sarcastic as I am starting to get tired of that many non sense, non worthy speculative posts about the elite spec when the thieves problem are far beyond a silly new weapon or a new trait line but a complete fix/redesign of the majority of our weapon set skills and traits.

But yeah 110/10 whatever…

kitten widget.9301:

I am starting to get tired of that many non sense, non worthy speculative posts about the elite spec when the thieves problem are far beyond a silly new weapon or a new trait line but a complete fix/redesign of the majority of our weapon set skills and traits.

We’re just preping for when there is solid info or a beta weekend and we’re called upon for solid feedback, we can quite well and concisely list out the “issues” we’ve found with the profession, and since the devs are already changing one thing, why not try out some of the other changes. We like to pretend to be optimistic here on the thief sub-forum, one laughs to keep from crying.

Overworld.9613:

We’re just preping for when there is solid info or a beta weekend and we’re called upon for solid feedback, we can quite well and concisely list out the “issues” we’ve found with the profession, and since the devs are already changing one thing, why not try out some of the other changes. We like to pretend to be optimistic here on the thief sub-forum, one laughs to keep from crying.

I totally understand that but I think we should be focusing in what we have in our hands now, and what we have is an under performing class with lots of balance problems.

There are lot of thieves that are not gonna be able to get access to the new elite spec as they did not acquired HoT, so even if the elite spec is fire, is not good enough as the thief class will be still broken.

Overworld.9613:

We’re just preping for when there is solid info or a beta weekend and we’re called upon for solid feedback, we can quite well and concisely list out the “issues” we’ve found with the profession, and since the devs are already changing one thing, why not try out some of the other changes. We like to pretend to be optimistic here on the thief sub-forum, one laughs to keep from crying.

To be honest, we pretty much overdid ourselves because they already have 90% of feedback weeks before Betaweekend. The other 10% will be about DareD.

Hmmm what the elite name inspires me is RNG skills.
Like you see dices rolling above the daredevil’s name as the casting time and if you get a 6 you rek stuff, if you get a 1 you better flee (if you can).
Or, there’s a selection of different effects for each skill and the dice decides which one will apply.

(A bit like “Taro cards of fate” for minstrels in the old Ragnarok online : It was one skill that was actually like 9 in 1, but only one is selected randomly when casted)

Tabootrinket.2631:

Hmmm what the elite name inspires me is RNG skills.
Like you see dices rolling above the daredevil’s name as the casting time and if you get a 6 you rek stuff, if you get a 1 you better flee (if you can).
Or, there’s a selection of different effects for each skill and the dice decides which one will apply.

(A bit like “Taro cards of fate” for minstrels in the old Ragnarok online : It was one skill that was actually like 9 in 1, but only one is selected randomly when casted)

This slipped through my mind but it is the worst case scenario.

Engi already has RNG skills. You don’t want them.

Tabootrinket.2631:

Hmmm what the elite name inspires me is RNG skills.
Like you see dices rolling above the daredevil’s name as the casting time and if you get a 6 you rek stuff, if you get a 1 you better flee (if you can).
Or, there’s a selection of different effects for each skill and the dice decides which one will apply.

(A bit like “Taro cards of fate” for minstrels in the old Ragnarok online : It was one skill that was actually like 9 in 1, but only one is selected randomly when casted)

They should just rename it to “Useless” then, if that’s the philosophy they’re going by.

PopeUrban.2578:

Assuming Daredevil and the staff are legit, I’m guessing we’d be trading steal (an engagement skill that potentially sets up the target) for some sort of disengagement skill that doesn’t grant stealth.

Impossible. First, F1 doesn’t grant stealth (without a trait). Second, no matter what happens to our F1 skill, it’ll still count as using “Steal” for all the existing traits. So no matter what the elite spec gets, you will still be able to trait your F1 to stealth on usage.

Maybe it’ll be useful?

That would be the best change.

stof.9341:

PopeUrban.2578:

Assuming Daredevil and the staff are legit, I’m guessing we’d be trading steal (an engagement skill that potentially sets up the target) for some sort of disengagement skill that doesn’t grant stealth.

Impossible. First, F1 doesn’t grant stealth (without a trait). Second, no matter what happens to our F1 skill, it’ll still count as using “Steal” for all the existing traits. So no matter what the elite spec gets, you will still be able to trait your F1 to stealth on usage.

I meant, specifically, it doesn’t grant stealth on its own.

Also, it’s not a long shot to suspect that any steal traits (if steal is replaced) could simply be altered. There’s no real technical reason that a trait that grants stealth on steal couldn’t also say “Grants stealth on steal, blinds nearby targets on disengage” etc. Similar to how several ele traits/skills proc different effects based upon attunement.

Or hey, perhaps the whole thing is set up to simply add an f3 similar to how the chronomancers got an f5.

In that case it’s entirely possible that steal traits simply wouldn’t function with the f3. You’ll notice that the only minor traits that effect steal are in the trickery line, which is essentially the “steal and tricks line” it’s not a long stretch of the imagination to assume that the new line would be the “disengage and X skill line” with a similar design to trickery. Buffs the mechanic and its associated skill category. That would allow people to build around utilizing both, or throw out trickery and simply not trait for steal in favor of using the new line to get similar style buffs from using the new mechanic.

But getting a new F3 skill isn’t trading Steal for something else then. You’d still have access to Steal and all it provides.

Right, but using f3 wouldn’t proc the steal traits, removing the potential balance issues of letting some of them influence a disengage-style ability.

Sure, you could still trait steal with mug, stealth, daze, etc. but you wouldn’t be able to apply all that without using steal as it exists currently, as a gap closer, meaning that it wouldn’t cause balance headaches when paired with a disengage style ability assuming they shared a cooldown.

Since thief will use new weapon “staff”, which mostly probably a melee staff like a martial art monk where they should not “steal” anymore.

Instead, the mechanic will change from “steal” into “donation”.

You shadow step to your foe and transfer 10G into his wallet from your account wallet, which highly surprise your foe and stun them for 3 sec, unblockable.

F1: Shadowstep to target foe and unlock a random dye for them. Opponent is stunned for <1% gold value of dye> seconds

I just hope they don’t give us cool downs on staff abilities i stead of using init…

Volrath.1473:

I just hope they don’t give us cool downs on staff abilities i stead of using init…

That would be highly, highly irregular. I figure if they were going to throw out init in the name of balance they would have done it a long time ago as it would have been the simplest way to balance us. They seem pretty committed to init regardless of any other design mistakes they’ve made in our balance patches.

There is no way they will put CD on staff. That would make it a nightmare to manage two CDs. Stop with those fantasies. So now what? you want utility skills to be on initiatives?

PopeUrban.2578:

stof.9341:

PopeUrban.2578:

Assuming Daredevil and the staff are legit, I’m guessing we’d be trading steal (an engagement skill that potentially sets up the target) for some sort of disengagement skill that doesn’t grant stealth.

Impossible. First, F1 doesn’t grant stealth (without a trait). Second, no matter what happens to our F1 skill, it’ll still count as using “Steal” for all the existing traits. So no matter what the elite spec gets, you will still be able to trait your F1 to stealth on usage.

Or hey, perhaps the whole thing is set up to simply add an f3 similar to how the chronomancers got an f5.

In that case it’s entirely possible that steal traits simply wouldn’t function with the f3. You’ll notice that the only minor traits that effect steal are in the trickery line, which is essentially the “steal and tricks line” it’s not a long stretch of the imagination to assume that the new line would be the “disengage and X skill line” with a similar design to trickery. Buffs the mechanic and its associated skill category. That would allow people to build around utilizing both, or throw out trickery and simply not trait for steal in favor of using the new line to get similar style buffs from using the new mechanic.

well said sir. It will definitely open up options as it intended to do so. However, ""disengage and X skill line"" would be like an on-demand Sword #2. Not sure how I would feel about that… OP wise

Consider that if such a skill were the case, it’s not a weapon skill, but an F skill, meaning it likely has its own cooldown. That makes it pretty darn easy to balance.

Of course with the talk of deception, it could very well be some sort of taunting clone generator or who knows what. guess we wait for the reveal this week and find out!

I’m guessing an F3 defensive stance that gives retaliation, a block, and a counter attack with initiative recharge. maybe stability with a longer cooldown. stance makes all initiative skill costs reduced for a limited time.

new skill type: stances like warriors. healing stance that gives heals triggered on number of attackers, or more healing the longer you are not hit. stance that grants stability, stance that grants quickness and adds vuln and slow to your attacks with an additional initiative cost to them. elite pbaoe knockdown stance that grants stability and torment.

stuff like that would be fitting of a melee staff weapon on thief.

Ground target Shadowstep via Steal.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Looking at the Warrior adrenaline change, it is only fair that our Initiative should have a based max of 15 initiatives and remove/replace Preparedness from our trait.

Very much agree. Trickery should be an optional spec line, but it feels mandatory for many players. I know I use it on both of my thieves.