Guild Wars 2

My concept for the Thief staff places it in a unique role among their weapons. Though staves are magic weapons, the more mundane Thief class is not well versed in their nuances,. They can, however, still gain magic benefits in the form of kinetic feedback – magic received from the staff in response to movement and collision. This manifests itself in the form of Boons and Healing, solidifying the Staff as a powerful means of alternative survivability and self-utility. Furthermore, the nature of the Staff as a boon, utility, and mobility weapon gives it heavy synergy with the Acrobatics line, creating some new build diversity for Thieves.

Without further ado, here’s my concept for the staff. Let’s consider all skill names and any example numbers placeholder, as they are not important here.

Chain Skill 1 – Swing
Swing your staff, damaging up to 3 foes.
Chain Skill 2 – Prod
Jab forward with your staff to quickly damage a single target. Gain 1 second of Regeneration.
Chain Skill 3 – Radial Vengeance
Swing your staff once in a 360 degree radius, damaging up to 5 adjacent foes. Magical feedback from the blow grants you 2 seconds of Retaliation on a successful hit.
*Retaliation triggers if the skill hits. It does not trigger multiple times for multiple hits.
*All three hits are weaker than standard attack chain skills. DPS is pretty comparable to Ranger GS chain skills.

Slot 2 – Invigorating Strike (3 Initiative)
Swing in a wide cone, damaging up to 5 enemies. Gain health on a successful hit.
*Heals a set amount. No multi-hit bonus.
*Has slightly longer reach than a standard melee attack.

Slot 3 – Vault (4 Initiative)
Plant your staff into the ground and use its momentum to quickly leap forward – foot outstretched. Kick the first foe in your path, dealing heavy damage.
Range – 600
Combo Finisher – Leap
*This is a skill-shot, not an enemy-targeted leap.

Slot 4 – Kinetic Blocks (5 Initiative)
Channel to block attacks, gaining 1 second of Protection and Regeneration for each successful block.
Channel duration – 2 seconds.
Subskill – Kinetic Slam (1 Initiative)
End the stance early with a heavy staff slam that damages foes in the area and grants 2 seconds of Fury.

Slot 5 – Kinetic Spiral (6 Initiative)
Channel to whirl your staff in front of you, damaging adjacent foes and gaining Swiftness and Vigor. You can move while channeling.
*Combo Finisher – Whirl (constant)
*Hits 8 times over 2 seconds, resulting in up to 4 seconds of base Swiftness and Vigor.
*Boons are gained via feedback by the whirling movement of the staff. No hits are necessary.
*Very short reach, due to the nature of the staff’s movement.

Stealth Skill – Sudden Gale
After a wind-up, unleash a powerful radial sweep that deals heavy damage to (up to 5) foes in a large point blank radius. Gain 3 stacks of Might (5 seconds) on a successful hit.
Activation Time – 2 ¼ seconds (2 second windup, ¼ second swing)
Radius – 200
Combo Finisher – Whirl (once)
*Stealth ends on a successful hit, as with any other stealth skill.
*The skill can be canceled by any movement or non-instant skill. This does count as a missed stealth skill, and thus allows a second attempt.
*Use Shadowstep or Steal to close the gap right before your swing.
*In comparison to Churning Earth – higher damage, faster windup, whirl instead of blast, no conditions, smaller radius, grants Might.

Weapon Overview
Pros
Wider array of boons than any other non-Elementalist weapon.
Versatile utility – every skill serves a purpose.
Capable of significant burst under the right circumstances.
Good sustain.
Highly mobile.
Cons
Below average dps barring PvE content or special circumstances in PvP.
Weak attack chain leaves the Thief highly reliant on initiative.
Like the Shortbow, S/P, and P/P, this has no built-in stealth source.
All utility (whirls aside) is selfish, rendering it inferior to Shortbow as a utility weapon in some group setups.
All high-damage skills are countered through good positioning and movement.
No built-in conditions.

Traiting for this weapon.

This staff concept is highly versatile in its trait synergies.
Despite a low average dps, it can benefit from traditional Power Builds because of its large spike potential (particularly with Sudden Gale).
That said, a minimum of 2 in Acrobatics (for Expeditious Dodger and Power of Inertia) is always recommended for getting the most of this weapon. With 3 in Acrobatics (Feline Grace), the Thief becomes the most dodge-happy class in the game if they manage their Vigor well. Consider taking Fleet of Foot or Pain Response for 4 points. Fluid Strikes is useful for obvious reasons, making 5 points in the line highly viable, given the aforementioned useful traits.
This weapon synergizes well with Assassin’s Reward and Invigorating Precision.

There’s some good ideas here- I’m not sure if this inspired you, but it feels similar to a certain acrobat line from a certain PvE based MMO.

I’d love for the staff to be made a martial weapon- and thief acrobat-type gameplay has been fun in every single game I’ve encountered it in. I can’t say much as far as balance but I’m not seeing much problem here.

I really like the idea of the staff as a martial weapon, though this would definitely require some new animations imo. But it would be really cool.

Gabe.6810:

There’s some good ideas here- I’m not sure if this inspired you, but it feels similar to a certain acrobat line from a certain PvE based MMO.

I’d love for the staff to be made a martial weapon- and thief acrobat-type gameplay has been fun in every single game I’ve encountered it in. I can’t say much as far as balance but I’m not seeing much problem here.

I haven’t actually played any MMOs with an Acrobat class. It’s just that, conceptually, I consider acrobatics to be a far more fun, interesting, and balanced assassin concept than stealth, and I wanted to create a playstyle around that.

I started with Kinetic Spiral as the only idea, and then I built from that. I still consider that skill to be the most fun part of the bar – and certainly the bread and butter for the sheer utility of it. The rest of the kit might have issues, but I was trying to flesh out around this.

The idea that you have in here that I like is the emphasis on vigor- staff fighting has been traditionally very mobile.

Some other things you may consider-
People who choose to fight with a stick generally will do with control and precision in mind rather than brute force- that being said, damage may not be the focus of the weapon but rather super high mobility over your opponent and control being extremely important.
I would say that adding a knock down/trip in there- or some dazing/confusion, something that gives you an edge as far as control.

Gabe.6810:

The idea that you have in here that I like is the emphasis on vigor- staff fighting has been traditionally very mobile.

Some other things you may consider-
People who choose to fight with a stick generally will do with control and precision in mind rather than brute force- that being said, damage may not be the focus of the weapon but rather super high mobility over your opponent and control being extremely important.
I would say that adding a knock down/trip in there- or some dazing/confusion, something that gives you an edge as far as control.

I was going for something a bit similar to Warframe’s rather fun Bo Staff stance, the Flailing Branch, which combines brute force with some rather energetic leaping and mobility animations.

That said, most of the condition and control omissions were done as part of a very conservative balance estimate. I could, however, try to refine it by tuning down damage in favor of adding control and extra utility. Knockbacks might be fitting for the flavor of this weapon, and would certainly transition well into P/P or SB.

I hate to be the one to kitten on your parade, but this weapon could never exist in PvP.

2/0/0/6/6 would be an untouchable bunker – between blocks and evades, you could easily spend 20-30s completely avoiding damage while still holding down a point.
You’d have perma-vigor, could easily spend 8-10s blocking by just spamming 4, would be healing yourself constantly (via the weaponset itself and the fact that you’d probably take AR), it’d be nuts.

Your only weakness would be Conditions, and that’s more the fault of the class overall than your weapon design – you could even mitigate that weakness with Lyssa runes.

This build probably isn’t perfect, but off the top of my head it’s a good example of how much healing you could pack into a build that was going to be avoiding/blocking most of the damage you throw at it anyway – http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQBVSzkenW4ETnw/0E0Ek3h5LlRrA0dU6bTA-TpQXAAaZAY/BA

Classes getting new weapons is overdue, and I think martial staff is the best new weapon concept for thieves (followed closely by whips and boomerangs). You have my support.

Channelled blocks/evades are an absolute no-no for initiative skills. Block ONE attack for an effect? As long as it’s expensive, yes, that’s as far as it can go. Have you seen Spear in its current state? I’m amazed it hasn’t been nerfed even more. evilapprentice already did a good job showing just how insane that would be.

An idea I had a while back while thinking of staves was for a skill like Guard Impact from Soul Calibur. A swift block that incapacitates an opponent for a very short time to allow a counterattack. So it would be something like this:

Shadow Riposte (4 initiative):

Parry your opponent’s next attack and knock them off-balance.

Block duration: 1.5s
Knockback: 0 (no distance, purposeful design)
Vulnerability: 10 (3s)
Range: 130

That’s the base skill. You could do a number of things after that. For example, you could attach some short-duration Might and Fury on a successful parry for a follow-up attack, or you could chain to a 2nd skill, or both, eg.

Shadow’s Retaliation (3 initiative):

Exploit your opponent’s momentary exposure with a swift, yet heavy blow. Guaranteed to be a critical hit.

Damage: ~300 (1.3)
Critical Chance Increase: 100%
Range: 180

Something like that. Think of Kilik doing Guard Impact followed by one of his signature twirly heavy overhead attacks. Not perfect by any means, but I think this kind of skill is much fairer than what is, quite frankly, absolutely broken levels of strong in the set above.

We have to be very, very liberal when considering blocks, evades and the like with global resource-based skills. It’s an entirely different ballgame.

I also think we have more than enough Vigor, even after nerfs. Maybe consider projectile destruction/reflection on your whirling skill with a very heavy cost eg. 4 to activate and 2 per second to maintain (resulting in degen of 1/second due to natural regen of 1/second)?