Guild Wars 2

Currently Improvision and Kleptomanic do no activate their effects when stealing without a target, but Thrill of the Crime does. Does anyone know if this is working as intended? I know Kleptomanic has a different wording then Thrill of the Crime, so it maybe it shouldn’t proc when stealing without a target. Improvision on the other hand though has the same “when you steal” wording as Thrill of the Crime though, so I think it should proc when stealing without a target (Or at least would like it if it did >_>).

i agree both should proc

If you ask me, none of them should. Skills should have to physically land to do what you’d expect, just like Cleansing ire, for example, if you ask me. This goes for anything, though. (Mesmer shatter blind, any others that proc regardless of hitting or not that are based on offensive abilities.)

ronpierce.2760:

If you ask me, none of them should. Skills should have to physically land to do what you’d expect, just like Cleansing ire, for example, if you ask me. This goes for anything, though. (Mesmer shatter blind, any others that proc regardless of hitting or not that are based on offensive abilities.)

On the other hand, it goes on full cooldown with no target, which would be extremely punishing if it did absolutely nothing and you use it just after that Mesmer stealths. This doesn’t affect other classes as much if they just miss one skill, but when you miss out on damage, heal, poison, weakness, boon rip, vigor, swiftness, might, fury, possible skill recharge etc. with the click of one button when you somehow lose target (stealth or other issues) that really sucks. I agree with OP, or if they decide to make it proc nothing, then it shouldn’t go on recharge, it should just say “no valid target.”

Zodryn.4216:

ronpierce.2760:

If you ask me, none of them should. Skills should have to physically land to do what you’d expect, just like Cleansing ire, for example, if you ask me. This goes for anything, though. (Mesmer shatter blind, any others that proc regardless of hitting or not that are based on offensive abilities.)

On the other hand, it goes on full cooldown with no target, which would be extremely punishing if it did absolutely nothing and you use it just after that Mesmer stealths. This doesn’t affect other classes as much if they just miss one skill, but when you miss out on damage, heal, poison, weakness, boon rip, vigor, swiftness, might, fury, possible skill recharge etc. with the click of one button when you somehow lose target (stealth or other issues) that really sucks. I agree with OP, or if they decide to make it proc nothing, then it shouldn’t go on recharge, it should just say “no valid target.”

That’s kind of the idea. You have to realize, Steal is an instant cast ability. That means if you do happen to miss, either the enemy got EXTREMELY lucky, or you made a fairly substantial mistake. Where as, say, for Warriors, Eviscerate has like a 300 lunge and if it misses you lose all of your adrenaline, you don’t cleanse conditions, you don’t get your 20% damage boost from the strength trait. That’s how it should be. That’s risk for reward. Being rewarded for a miss does the game no good and doesn’t push people to play better and watch for opportunities. The game needs to move more in that direction, not gain easier hand outs.

Again, not picking on thieves, it’s just relevant. All classes should be treated this way.

I think you’re going about it the wrong way. Sometimes you want to steal when nobody is around just for the added benefits of casting steal. I’m saying that adding improvision and possibly kleptomanic to the reasons why you would want to steal without a target would be nice.

ronpierce.2760:

That’s kind of the idea. You have to realize, Steal is an instant cast ability. That means if you do happen to miss, either the enemy got EXTREMELY lucky, or you made a fairly substantial mistake. Where as, say, for Warriors, Eviscerate has like a 300 lunge and if it misses you lose all of your adrenaline, you don’t cleanse conditions, you don’t get your 20% damage boost from the strength trait. That’s how it should be. That’s risk for reward. Being rewarded for a miss does the game no good and doesn’t push people to play better and watch for opportunities. The game needs to move more in that direction, not gain easier hand outs.

Again, not picking on thieves, it’s just relevant. All classes should be treated this way.

They still lunge though and maybe do some cleave if the main target blocked. Or take shattering as an example. If the Mesmers target dodges, it doesn’t affect him, but it’s AoE so maybe it’ll hit someone else. Furthermore, you can easily summon more clones and do a different shatter.

With your recommendation for steal if you miss you would do exactly nothing and get a 20s cooldown out of it. There are Mesmer skills that won’t even let you cast them without a target. If steal was to really do absolutely nothing without a target, it shouldn’t let you cast it without one.

Zodryn.4216:

ronpierce.2760:

That’s kind of the idea. You have to realize, Steal is an instant cast ability. That means if you do happen to miss, either the enemy got EXTREMELY lucky, or you made a fairly substantial mistake. Where as, say, for Warriors, Eviscerate has like a 300 lunge and if it misses you lose all of your adrenaline, you don’t cleanse conditions, you don’t get your 20% damage boost from the strength trait. That’s how it should be. That’s risk for reward. Being rewarded for a miss does the game no good and doesn’t push people to play better and watch for opportunities. The game needs to move more in that direction, not gain easier hand outs.

Again, not picking on thieves, it’s just relevant. All classes should be treated this way.

They still lunge though and maybe do some cleave if the main target blocked. Or take shattering as an example. If the Mesmers target dodges, it doesn’t affect him, but it’s AoE so maybe it’ll hit someone else. Furthermore, you can easily summon more clones and do a different shatter.

With your recommendation for steal if you miss you would do exactly nothing and get a 20s cooldown out of it. There are Mesmer skills that won’t even let you cast them without a target. If steal was to really do absolutely nothing without a target, it shouldn’t let you cast it without one.

Phantasm’s should just fail if they don’t have a target, I would agree with that. There are skills like Dark Pact on Necromancer that you can cast that only do anything if you have a target but still go on full Cooldown if you happen to use it without a target.

Like I said with all of the warrior traits, necromancer abilities, and so on. If you fail an attack it should fail. We might not see eye-to-eye, but it’s not a “wrong” philosophy. This game desperately needs more risk attached to instant cast spells and procs, not make it more lenient.

Also, if a warrior hits even with cleave, it still hit something. And the lunge is a totally separate part of the skill. You must HIT someone for it to trigger the traits, as should be the case on all procs. You should only be rewarded for hitting someone with a skill, and that’s just how I feel the game should move in direction.

I view the steal skill as a multifaceted thing. There’s the teleport where you basically jump someone and take their stuff, which is all it does baseline, and if you miss it you don’t get their stuff. Then there’s the thief’s slightly neurotic quirks that gives them certain effects when they steal or think/plan to steal. Example: thrill of the crime. The thief gets swiftness might and fury because he gets a thrill when he steals, or when he even thinks about stealing, therefore it procs with no target.

In that regard it’s just like a warrior using a shout or a guard using a virtue, but it’s about our obsession with taking things from people. Preparing for it (hidden thief), getting an adrenaline boost when doing/thinking of it (thrill of the crime).

Zodryn.4216:

I view the steal skill as a multifaceted thing. There’s the teleport where you basically jump someone and take their stuff, which is all it does baseline, and if you miss it you don’t get their stuff. Then there’s the thief’s slightly neurotic quirks that gives them certain effects when they steal or think/plan to steal. Example: thrill of the crime. The thief gets swiftness might and fury because he gets a thrill when he steals, or when he even thinks about stealing, therefore it procs with no target.

In that regard it’s just like a warrior using a shout or a guard using a virtue, but it’s about our obsession with taking things from people. Preparing for it (hidden thief), getting an adrenaline boost when doing/thinking of it (thrill of the crime).

Anything can be spun that way. It’d be great if Burst skills were “multi-faceted”, because sometimes you really want to just use it to clear conditions and get a damage buff for your assault as you’re about to enter a fight or re-engage, as you’re using that built up adrenaline whether you hit someone or not, but due to the Developers wanting to push skill and actually landing skills, you still have to make contact to gain those benefits.

As for thief, pressing “steal” isn’t thinking about stealing. It’s trying to steal and failing to actually steal. Why would you be rewarded for “swiping” at mid air? “Oh man, feels invigorating to steal some of this air!” It just doesn’t really make sense. That thrill should come from having actually stolen something.

But beyond a logical stand-point, it promotes unskillful play when you can totally miss something and still get a big part of the benefit of a skill. I can’t imagine many people would be entirely happy if they went and made all of the burst-related traits trigger regardless of hitting, and so forth down the line. Except maybe warriors because they’d be biased. Unfortunately, I think this case comes down to a lot of bias. It’s easy to spin logic to match your view, but the point is, you’re getting benefits for “failed” spell casts. Not a great way to push players to strive to get better if you ask me.

Also, yes of course it goes on full cooldown… Every class but Thief has to worry about their primary attacks missing and going on full cooldown with absolutely 0 benefit. That’s why people dodge them.

It really doesn’t promote unskillful play, it promotes different uses for our class mechanic. If you needed that heal from mug and miss, you will die, regardless of whether you just got some swiftness out of it. But how often do I miss steal? Not that often. How often do I use it as a support for my teammates? Much more often. I can sacrifice the primary function of steal along with many secondary effects to buff my teammates on our way to an objective, gain a couple seconds of stealth etc. It’s more about using it in a different scenario entirely than about failing to hit someone. And you lose much more than half of it’s functionality if you choose to use it with no target.

Also, if you try steal something, you will get an adrenaline rush even if you totally fail. Even the anticipation causes that, it’s not “woohoo, swiping at midair is thrilling.” If you don’t actually steal from someone, you don’t get any items from them, no boon rip, poison, weakness, damage or healing. That makes total sense, but many of the other buffs logically make sense to have applied.

Ye ronpierce I said this before but sometimes you miss steal on purpose for the utility. The same can be said for many other spells ingame (Sometimes you miss heartseeker for the mobility, heal at full hp for the trap from Trapper’s Respite, or use Firery Whirl for mobility as well).

Irregardless, as your whole stance relies on a game-wide change that hasn’t happened yet and has no signs of happening soon. And thus is very irrelevant. Sure, if every spell was punishing on missed casts in GW2, then Steal should be punishing for missed casts as well. But the fact is GW2 isn’t a game where every spell punishes you for missing casts, it’s a game where some spells have utility even on missed casts.

If you wanna argue for game-wide changes that’s fine, but I don’t think a thread in the thief forums is the best place to do that. Its pretty derailing to the actual discussion at hand.

Midi.8359:

Ye ronpierce I said this before but sometimes you miss steal on purpose for the utility. The same can be said for many other spells ingame (Sometimes you miss heartseeker for the mobility, heal at full hp for the trap from Trapper’s Respite, or use Firery Whirl for mobility as well).

Irregardless, as your whole stance relies on a game-wide change that hasn’t happened yet and has no signs of happening soon. And thus is very irrelevant. Sure, if every spell was punishing on missed casts in GW2, then Steal should be punishing for missed casts as well. But the fact is GW2 isn’t a game where every spell punishes you for missing casts, it’s a game where some spells have utility even on missed casts.

If you wanna argue for game-wide changes that’s fine, but I don’t think a thread in the thief forums is the best place to do that. Its pretty derailing to the actual discussion at hand.

It has happened in places. Originally, Cleansing Ire and the 20% damage trait, neither required them to land, but now they do. Sometimes people wanted to “just use burst skills for the utility” but now they have to land their skills to take advantage of them. What makes thieves so special in the “purposefully miss skills for utility” department?

It’s not that we’re special, look at what we currently get for missing steal: a couple of boons. Is that really that unreasonable? Take that away and we have no swiftness access when roaming the world (nobody takes acro and it barely gives any swiftness anyway). Comparatively, it barely does anything while cleansing ire could save your life by removing large stacks of 3 different damaging condis by swinging at air. From a balance perspective, there is no reason to nerf steal by granting boons only if it hits.

Steal is just fine as it is. Not getting 3 initiative back and the skill CD recharge from Improvisation for not successfully stealing is completely fair. You shouldn’t be able to get your heal or elite skill refreshed for just pressing F1 on top of getting a 3s reduction in weapon skill CDs. Other abilities that lower a CD in someway that isn’t just a base reduction from a trait require it to be successful. Thrill of the Crime is as it is to allow for the swiftness proc on your team at the start of a match basically. Plus you still get stealth from Hidden Thief if you don’t hit a target.