Guild Wars 2

A neat idea I had: lets give Thiefs some reliable melee condition damage based fun with some respectable crowd control in the mix.

The numbers should be relatively balanced in PvP and PvE (bar someone getting 25 stacks of bleed on them, deciding not to use any removal and then getting hit with skill 4…but that seems more like a l2p issue then anything).

Weapon type: dual wield

Weapon Focus: conditions, crowd control.

What it is: two short swords, each attached to the gauntlets on the outer side of the forearm (for animation purposes they would be retractable when not in combat)

Skill 1: Piercing Blade

Stab your foe, inflicting vulnerability

Duration of vulnerability: 5s
Number of Stacks of Vulnerability: 3
Casting Time: 0.1
Damage: 270
Range: 130

Skill 1.b: Slashing Whirl

Whirl in a circle slashing all foes, inflicting confusion

Duration of Confusion: 5s
Casting Time: 0.5
Damage: 370
Range: 130 radius

Skill 1.c: Scissor Slash

Slash your foe with both blades at the same time, inflicting weakness

Duration of Weakness: 5s
Casting Time: 0.5
Damage: 580
Range: 13o (cone AoE)

Skill 2: Assassin’s Strike

Cloak yourself in stealth and increase the damage of your next attack by 20%

Initiative Cost: 5
Stealth: 3s

Skill 2.b: Assassin’s Return

Shadow Step to the lowest health foe in the area and confuse all foes.

Note—-Using this ability will break stealth.

Initiative Cost: 1
Confusion: 3s
Time until Assassin’s Return reverts back to Assassin’s Strike: 5s

Skill 3: Parrying Stance

Reflect the next incoming attack back to its source.

Initiative Cost: 4
Duration: 5s
Casting Time: 0.5

Skill 4: Cauterizing Blades (dual wield)

Strike your foe with both blades, removing all stacks of bleed, inflict damage for each stack removed this way and inflict burning.

Initiative Cost: 5
Damage per stack of bleed removed: 60+(0.1*Condition damage)
Burning Duration: 6s
Damage: 250
Casting Time: 0.5
Range: 150 (Cone AoE)

Example: 0.1*1400=140+60=200*15=3000 damage

Skill 5: Flayer’s Stance (dual wield)

Gain 25% condition damage and each attack inflicts bleed.

Initiative Cost: 4
Duration: 10s
Number of bleeds per attack: 1
Casting Time: 0.5

i’ll agree only that games need more katars.

Cool idea, except you can lower the stealth skills initative cost from 4 to 1 initative using stealth traits, and since it actually stealths its guarenteed.

Daecollo.9578:

Cool idea, except you can lower the stealth skills initative cost from 4 to 1 initative using stealth traits, and since it actually stealths its guarenteed.

Sounds like potential to permastealth as long as you don’t attack Give me a sec to figure out a prerequisite to stop that from happening.

Okay, so I increased the initiative cost to 5 and now using Assassin’s Return will break stealth. this will work as a deterent similar to how Infiltrator’s Strike can’t be spammed thanks to Shadow return (which was the initial concept to prevent abuse). Together these should prevent any significant abuse.

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mck9oovRloovRlo0xGG0ocbVaos

Pretty much permastealth.

It would be a balanced spec if Stealth was like Predator’s Stealth where you could still see the thief moving around, just like a mirror.

Personally if this was a real build this is what I’d trait into, what types of items I’d use, etc.

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mck9oMFrMmMFrMma0xffcVaqoV08khd70z7070c7kGW70V7owZ70m8ofZ

Reminiscent of P/D bunker builds but without the sneak attack for stacking bleeds.

Looks like you could maintain Vulnerability, Confusion, and Weakness with the Auto-Attack alone, seems odd to me.

Prehaps change it to only add Confusion and Weakness on the 2nd and 3rd attack, and decrease the duration to 2-3 seconds.

I could see Skill#4: Cauterizing Blades to be an issue. If you have significantly less condition damage than someone else in your group, you would be stealing their bleed stacks and effectivly doing less damage to the mob this way. On the other hand, using this weapon set chances are you would be stacking Condition Damage, so the difference in damage would be minor … I like the idea though!

Just seems like you want to play Assassin’s Creed in an MMO.

The weapon abilities you listed are pretty weird. A block ability with no CD is pretty overpowered as well. Teleporting to lowest health enemy is a terrible thing to tie to an ability. The 5 ability also makes no sense. 25% Condition damage? 25% of what?

The auto attack also has insane numbers. The base damage on Backstab is 585 (from the back), but yet you set the third hit to 580. That’d be pretty hilarious in actual use.

I do have to say that I really, really like the 4 ability. Just the idea behind it: deal more damage based on amount of conditions, but remove said conditions on the attack. It’s like Conditions “mark” the enemy for more damage. I’ve always liked abilities like this, and I think thief would fit it the most.

You also didn’t list any “Dual” abilities with other weapons. Remember: the thief isn’t like other classes. Our offhand determines what our 3rd ability is.

Wrist-Blades? OK
Kama? AWESOME!

Since apparently the forums have decided quoting can’t happen

“The 5 ability also makes no sense. 25% Condition damage? 25% of what?”

25% condition damage makes perfect sense, it’s a stat so take your condition damage and multiply it by 0.25 and then add that number to your existing condition damage.

" A block ability with no CD is pretty overpowered as well."

A block for 4 initiative that blocks a single attack. If your opponent is running a predictable build that’s so choreographed that you can predict exactly what to block it’s going to be potent but that just forces players to start being dynamic in their rotations. No more precasting dat CnD, No more bulls rush HB…no more reliable, predictable c-c-c-c-ombo breakers.

“The auto attack also has insane numbers”

The auto attacks numbers are similar to the sword’s numbers with a higher damage “finishing” hit because the build has 2 different stance abilities which don’t do guaranteed damage but the numbers are totally rough, it was just a ballpark figure that would be somewhat realistic.

“I do have to say that I really, really like the 4 ability. Just the idea behind it: deal more damage based on amount of conditions, but remove said conditions on the attack. It’s like Conditions “mark” the enemy for more damage. I’ve always liked abilities like this, and I think thief would fit it the most.”

I figured that bleeds tend to get stacked to 25 which in turn reduces the effectiveness of bleeds so why not make something to work with other bleeders using a somewhat unique mechanic?

“You also didn’t list any “Dual” abilities with other weapons. Remember: the thief isn’t like other classes. Our offhand determines what our 3rd ability is.”

The weapon set is a dual wield. You can’t use it with another weapon just like the Short Bow.

“Looks like you could maintain Vulnerability, Confusion, and Weakness with the Auto-Attack alone, seems odd to me.”

The durations definitely need a nerf, what I wanted was to have a auto attack cycle that maintains conditions which make it hard to fight back. The 1st attack could go without the vulnerability stacks as well. Good call.

“I could see Skill#4: Cauterizing Blades to be an issue. If you have significantly less condition damage than someone else in your group, you would be stealing their bleed stacks and effectivly doing less damage to the mob this way. On the other hand, using this weapon set chances are you would be stacking Condition Damage, so the difference in damage would be minor … I like the idea though!”

The idea is to wait until the opponent/foe has lots of bleed stacks and then remove them, making room for more bleed stacks while doing a fairly substantial amount of damage in exchange for removing said stacks.

And yes this is inspired a little bit by Assassin’s Creed, however the weapons themselves are not the same, they are short swords attached to your gauntlets…not daggers mounted on the inside of the forearm.

Keep commenting guys! I’d love for this concept to actually be considered for a update (or more likely an expansion).

Kamas, Wristblades… give them to me as Dagger skins (as they were in GW1, we got kamas and fist/fist-spikes weapons as dagger skins) and let create weapons that aren’t used similarly to existing weapons. Or even already created weapons that we could use.

I don’t want to despise your idea but I think they would be better as dagger skins for the sake of game balance. If they start adding all kind of niche weapons to every profession because it fits with that single profession the game would end up full of weapons usable only by one profession (wich means production costs that only 1/8 of the player base will be able to use, and that’s supposing most of them will want to use it).

Aditionally, you suffer from the “wanting it to be so awesome that ends up super overpowered” syndrome (like some guy who proposed changing Body Shot to 5 spreaded shots -somewhat nice idea- each one applying 2 Vulnerability for a total of 10 Vuln for just 3 initiative -overpowered idea-).

That main chain is completly insane, and many of the skills you propposed wouldn’t really fit in the game.

I don’t want to sound harsh, I apreciate the idea you had, and yeah, wrist blades are cool, but we would be good with them as Dagger skins (same as Kamas).

I would like to see some already existing weapons (OH Sword, Rifle or even melee Staff) implemented before any new weapon that only fits our profession.

So you’re entire argument for refuting my idea is “it could be a skin instead” and “it’s overpowered”?

I’m all for criticism but at least give real reasons for or against them, I’m sorry but I am offended over your comments, it’s not that you like or dislike the concept, it’s how you worded it, your assumptions about my reasoning and lastly your lack of practical reasoning.

From the wording of your comments I have a inkling that English is your second language and if that’s true I understand that there may be some cultural differences and even a language barrier…but still…give fully developed thoughts based on more then “skin”. Thank you for your input anyways.

BabelFish.7234:

So you’re entire argument for refuting my idea is “it could be a skin instead” and “it’s overpowered”?

I’m all for criticism but at least give real reasons for or against them, I’m sorry but I am offended over your comments, it’s not that you like or dislike the concept, it’s how you worded it, your assumptions about my reasoning and lastly your lack of practical reasoning.

From the wording of your comments I have a inkling that English is your second language and if that’s true I understand that there may be some cultural differences and even a language barrier…but still…give fully developed thoughts based on more then “skin”. Thank you for your input anyways.

English is indeed my second language, but I already put up examples and “real reasons” of what I though, I re-read my post to check just in case but it’s all explained there, both for the part talking about the skin and about how it was overpowered, if you want I can go and analyze the whole bar (in another comment because it doesn’t allow me to type too much on a single post).

About “it can be a skin instead”… what’s exactly wrong with that? I already explained my reasons for that, it would be a weapon solely tied to 1 profession and for producion costs that sucks (I already said that part in my first comment, I’m a game designer myself, and I’ve learned my share of how something like this isn’t productive for a game like this one).

In Guild Wars 1 we had dagger skins that really were other weapons and it was perfectly fine. Wristblades are cool, but I don’t think a weapon used just by a single profession should be included in the game when there are many weapons out there that could cover holes on different professions. Wristblades in real combat have very similar functionalities to Daggers. If we’re going to separate them, then let’s separate Sword skins from Katanas, Scimitars and Foils.

About what I said of it being OP and some skills not fitting with the game, I will analyze the complete set:

- Please look at the monstruous combination of damage and different array of conditions that you put in the main chain. Not even Mesmers can apply confusion on their main chain (even if the scepter states it does, it doesn’t, it did during beta, but was removed and the text wasn’t changed). So basically we would be better than mesmers at confusing. I would love to see confusion on some Thief skill, but putting it on a main chain, that already maintains other 2 conditions, is totally wrong. Also the damage numbers are really high considering the other effects. 3 stacks of vulnerability is also wrong, vulnerabilities comming from a chain attack are applied just once per strike (the most is 2 per complete cycle of 3 strikes). This would make Body Shot even crappier.

- 5th is ABSOLUTELY INSANE!! It takes a lot of investment on traits or equipment to decently increase your condition damage… and with this basically you’re able to maintain a +25% Condition Damage AND apply Bleeds with every attack… If that doesn’t cost 16 initiative (which means you can’t use it) it’s simply nasty and overpowered.

- Your 4th and 5th skills are listed as dual skills, which is something not seen before (you’re also listing as dual wield a weapon that could perfectly be separated on main hand and offhand). I don’t know if you just mean the animation or if it also takes advantage of traits.

- The parry one is fine, I would love a skill like that on OH Sword and it wouldn’t be OP since you’re going to receive multiple attacks and blocking just one per use is OK. Outside water the pressure from attacks is greater so it isn’t as great as Nine Tails.

- The fourth skill… as you could easily maintain huge stacks of bleeds, and reapply them easily again once removed as you can easily maintain 5th with its 10 seconds duration at 4 initiative cost, is nasty in how it synergizes with 5th. Even without that, a 6 second burn at the cost of 5 initiative is already good by itself (1 second burn is more or less like 1 second of 8*Bleed, and you will already apply insane amounts of bleed. Add all that extra damage and you’re owning everyone in sight. With this set sacrificing the bleeds isn’t a great deal at all as you can get them again in just seconds. Not to mention that the damage done by each sacrificed stack counts as condition damage (which doesn’t have a precedent, condition damage only affects condition ticks, never direct damage from an attack)… which is armor ignoring damage and benefits from the +25% damage.

- The second skill is an unconditional stealth that increases your damage by 20%… and costs 5 initiative. Cloack and Dagger requires you to hit to get Stealth, costs more initiative and apply 3 Vuln (+3% damage increase). Unconditional spammable stealth is already overpowered, add the +20% damage and we get into god mode territory once people start switching to main hand dagger after using this unconditional stealth.

As I said, the coplete set suffers from you thinking about it as an awesome set (because you love those weapons and I understand it) that you don’t analyze every weapon set in the game and what can be done or what can’t be done, and think it would be fine this way. But no, if we use some maths, this set can completly destroy everything (everything, really) that you throw at it.

I don’t want to be harsh, as I said I’m a videogame designer myself and it isn’t my intention to say “your ideas aren’t right, don’t do it”, because I understand what you’re going through when you try to design something like that. This happens a lot in designing, you just need to keep trying and trying, don’t give up. It’s good that you put the effort into making something like this because you learn a lot from doing it.

What I’m trying to do is making you realize how from a production cost viewpoint it isn’t a very viable idea, and how from a game balance point, you should grab a calculator (the best friend of any skill designer) and check every skill in the game and the sinergies of most existing builds (very important, what makes most skills OP isn’t the proper skill, but the combinations it can be used in) and what the best of them can do or not so you can get a better idea of how to procede with the weapon set you want to create.

This set should be reworked a lot, and you would learn a lot from trying to make it more balanced. The weapons themselves, as I said, would be more viable as dagger skins rather than making a new set, but you can continue designing weapon sets and learn from it (it evens helps you learn more about the whole game if you document yourself in the process).

Daecollo.9578:

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mck9oovRloovRlo0xGG0ocbVaos

Pretty much permastealth.

It would be a balanced spec if Stealth was like Predator’s Stealth where you could still see the thief moving around, just like a mirror.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMMQgVDrwOU

Jesse Ventura FTW….

….Anyways….. i don’t think we need more weapon sets,just fix the existing ones and stop nerfing innocent skills.On a roleplaying state,i think the small knife that goes with the katana(it looks kinda like a mini katana) will look rather good too.

The quoting is still broken in this thread -.-

@ Lokheit.7943

That’s better

1. adds bleeds to every attack and gives a reasonable boost to condition damage but does no damage itself. Why would something that deals no damage itself cost 6 initiative? Additionally this weapon set is a heavy initiative set, if everything was 5-6 initiative there would be a major, major issue but in the end this is just semantics. The numbers are there to give a starting value.

Dual skills are implemented already, see Pistol Whip, Death Blossom, etc.

Yes there’s some nasty synergy with #4 and #5, I think you get how the skill is supposed to function however I think you’re over estimating the damage it does.

The formula is 0.1*condition damage+60.
So if you’re fully geared for condition damage in PvP you’ll have 1758 condition damage.
0.1*1758=175.8(rounded to 176)+60=236xnumber of bleeds(for arguments sake lets stick to 15 stacks of bleed) so 236×15=3540 damage. It’s fine with the burn duration considering the damage it creates and its true purpose of removing stacks of bleed in order to maximize a group’s bleed efficiency.

The one thing you misunderstand though is that the 25% condition damage only applies to the conditions you give the target during that period of time. The game doesn’t look at your condition damage for every tick of the bleed or burn, it looks at your condition damage upon application.

1. could use numbers adjustment, the +20% damage probably isn’t needed and this could be a big boon to the BS build even though to maximize it’s potential you have to go neck deep in trickery which comes at the cost of critical strikes or deadly arts (or both). Unfortunately I can’t edit the +20% out or I would. Thanks for pointing out that abuse.

FYI I’ve been involved in balancing video games for years as well as testing them, the numbers aren’t so over-the-top that the concept is totally unworkable but there are a few areas which do need nerfing and you’ve pointed one of them out. Thank you.

Honestly, if ‘2’ wasn’t Stealth but a new ability like “Hidden”, which gave stealth boons but didn’t really cloak you, it simply mirrored you. (They can still see you if they are looking at you, but your mirrored so harder to see.)