Guild Wars 2

I’m curious. For the sake of discussion, if Anet let you come up with new skills that could be swapped out to make some weapon sets as viable as our most synergistic set, what would those skills be? An alternative to Death Blossom perhaps? Or maybe and alternative to the other four as well so DD condi has more options? How would P/P get some love? I’m curious.

Well I outlined this idea in more detail a while back.

But essentially I’d move steath from a utility/weapon skill side-effect to a class skill. So it becomes a F1/F2 ability similar to what Mesmers and many other classes have.

This ensures that stealth can play a role in all Thief builds and won’t just be exclusive for the ones that have Cloak and Dagger or Black Powder.

The new stealth however would consume Initiative when used at a rate of 1/second, thus limiting the amount of time we can spend in stealth. To compensate, weapon-skills will become a little cheaper to use.

“Revealed” as such wouldn’t need to exist any longer. However natural Initiative regeneration should be suppressed for a few seconds after leaving stealth.

This ensures that stealth is used as a defensive move, rather than being both a defensive and offensive move and can’t be chained extensively for ages.

We’d also lose our stealth attacks. Instead Cloak and Dagger would chain into Backstab, but no longer require stealth. When wielding a Pistol mainhand it would chain into Sneak Attack.

This would make both these “hard-hitters” more telegraphed and fairer to avoid, while still being powerful tools.

Obviously this is a pretty fundamental change but one I think that would make the Thief class far more fun to play and play against with more counter-play opportunities but also more variety and ways to shine. Needless to say some traits would need to change and others replaced completely, but ultimately it’s for the better.

By this disposition then, how I would play a DD thief is sparingly using stealth. In fact, I’d only use it after I CnD since they would know when I’m about to backstab. Yet at the same time I wouldn’t need to CnD, This is what I like, I was also a fan of the venom on F skills I read awhile back.

You’ve already mentioned DD, /D could use some love in general.
Dancing Dagger could stay as it is if it had higher power scaling and faster projectile speed (somewhere in between pre-ner and now).

Death Blossom could also use better power scaling so that it has any purpose in power specs, also make its evasion frame equal to the animation frame cause as it is now it’s completely unreliable as an evade.

CnD should have increased damage in PvP (not as much as pre-nerf) and apply 5 stacks of vulnerability instead of current 3 and these should last longer.

Tactical strike could use some dmg boost since changing daze into stun would be too OP (this change from WvW perspective).

Larcenous Strike should deal less dmg, imo, but steal 2 boons like pre-nerf. Make it more of a control spec and not lawl-nope-evade.

DP and SP are fine now, imo

AA on P/ should shoot faster (both cond PD and power specs benefit from it).

SB range back to 1200 and 1/4 sec aftercast on Disabling Shot.

Improvisation should refresh skill (not of type, just skill):
- if 1 skill is on CD -> 0
- if 2-3 -> 1
- more than 3 -> 2
Includes heal (and elite?). ICD of 30-35 sec or maybe even more so that it’s not abused with Sleight of Hand.

Panic Strike changed into some sort of signet mastery. Signet Actives now affect your allies (radius 130-150; melee range in general). PvE Support thief: SoS, Sig of Agility, SR. See SoS change below.

Shadow Rejuvenation should heal you when you enter stealth (say 650-700 HP) and not proc every second while in stealth (no more perma stealthing in WvW with DP as it would have no use. This would encourage more frequent restealths while, thus more active combat approach – /D in mind).

Shadow Protector might give 4 sec of protection when you enter stealth on 10-15 sec ICD.

Last Refuge’d behave like Blinding Powder, that is interrupt current action.

CS, Acro, and Trickery are fine, imo.

Signet of Shadows could use 3-4 sec stability on top of blind and break stun instead of Shadow Trap. It would give us a reliable stability source and work great with the new signet mastery. CD might be increased to 40-45sec.

My 2 cents. I have no clue how to make PP and Venoms viable without breaking them, though.
Quick suggestion, how about swapping boon duration in Acro with HPwr in SA? Assassin’s Reward could use it and atm boon duration in Acro affects Felina Grace, Power of Inertia and possibly meta runes of lyssa.

It’s WvW/tPvP/PvE oriented opinion with emphasis on WvW.

I have some Ideas

One : We can add a trait in acrobatic that give you Protection and regen for X time when you succeful a dodge, that mean in combat when you dode the attack of an enemy and its writed “dodged” on your character you gain the bonus
or maybe gain +700 hp when you do a succeful dodge, that would be an alternativ at shadow rejuveneration

second: change the trait hard to catch by gain +25% speed (im a bit bored of that shadow signet) and maybe something else like give stabi when you get a fear, stuck, stun , daze etc…
or add a stun breaker to shadow infiltrator skill with an internal CD like 15-20sec

Also put something that regen initiative in the Lethal strike traits, its the only traits without anything for regen ini

And finaly reduce the CD of Roll of Initiative to 50sec from 60sec

Despo.2579:

I have some Ideas

One : We can add a trait in acrobatic that give you Protection and regen for X time when you succeful a dodge, that mean in combat when you dode the attack of an enemy and its writed “dodged” on your character you gain the bonus
or maybe gain +700 hp when you do a succeful dodge, that would be an alternativ at shadow rejuveneration

I think you’re going in the right direction to add nonstealth play, but s/d thief has a lot of dodges and it might be a little OP. I’d like to see a buff to assassin’s reward maybe to 100hp/s or combining it with quick pockets (as both support active play and staying in the fight, this would help thieves who want to play sustain builds and not burst)

Yeah maybe add an international CD in my proposition

Otherwise I forget to say about the 3 of the bow (cluster bomb?) make it back to 1200 range .. we don’t have weapons with 1200 range and the projectile is enough slow for let it too 1200
When I see a poor enginer with just hand grenades have a better range than a bow thats just weird

this is facultativ:
a little boost for scorpion whire, add poison for 5sec because its “scorpion” whire !

or maybe 2 stack of torment for 5sec, because when you whire a person to you generaly the person dont want to be in melee, so he will have the choice to stay in melee and eat your attacks or run away and eat the torment :p

Despo.2579:

Yeah maybe add an international CD in my proposition

Otherwise I forget to say about the 3 of the bow (cluster bomb?) make it back to 1200 range .. we don’t have weapons with 1200 range and the projectile is enough slow for let it too 1200
When I see a poor enginer with just hand grenades have a better range than a bow thats just weird

this is facultativ:
a little boost for scorpion whire, add poison for 5sec because its “scorpion” whire !

or maybe 2 stack of torment for 5sec, because when you whire a person to you generaly the person dont want to be in melee, so he will have the choice to stay in melee and eat your attacks or run away and eat the torment :p

I like your idea with protection, while a bit OP taking things like Sword into account, it would promote a lot more dueling thieves instead of in and out thieves. And to add I think it’s called Scorpion Wire as a reference to scorpion from Mortal Kombat who uses a scorpion chain to pull enemies toward him though I may be wrong. I know Roll for Initiative is a call-out to Dungeons and Dragons. Either way our thieves should say “Get over here!”