Guild Wars 2

Why are there so many traits for one button?! All that… into one button…. from 9 out of 52 total traits (almost 20% of available traits) and I didn’t even use them all.

Just my personal opinion, but this is poor design. Steal is “meh” unmodified but then you go 20/0/20/0/30 and you can turn steal into a proverbial easy button on a 20s CD. Like a “Press F1 to everything all teh combatz!1!one”

Someone help me wrap my head around this? I am a n00b thief and am trying to wrap my head around some of the design decisions.

Gj you waste 50 Trait point on boost one spell

Steal without trait is useless class skill as hell

Evilek.5690:

Steal without trait is useless class skill as hell

A free gap-closer that gives you an additional skill?

I would be laughing if I wasn’t confused

Axelwarrior.9084:

Evilek.5690:

Steal without trait is useless class skill as hell

A free gap-closer that gives you an additional skill?

I would be laughing if I wasn’t confused

Sorry but you’re ridiculous.

Mesmer F1 F F3 make burst,invurnerability and daze

Necromancer F1 18k+ HP with 5 skills

Warrior F1 ? No comment 8k Eviscerate in sPvP with axe, Massive aoe with bow, Big stun with mace and all this with 6 sec CD !

Engineer with powerfull kits

vs

Thief steal stolen horrible skills with 35 sec CD ? http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Steal

^ its 7 seconds, and thats with 30 points in discipline, and if you can land the obvious animations. And kits arent an engineers mechanic. Toolbelt skills are

yolo swaggins.2570:

Why are there so many traits for one button?!

Because Steal/Shadowstep is our class mechanic. Your traits modify it heavily. No need to take everything, though I’d suggest taking something. If you are paralyzed by indecision, put 10 in DA and take Mug.

:( I guess. Mug looks like an obvious choice but that doesn’t change how I feel for Steal. Compared to ele attunements and mesmer shatters Steal feels so flat. Regardless, thanks for the help.

What if there was a trait that instead of buffing steal, buffed the skills you stole?

Carpboy.7145:

What if there was a trait that instead of buffing steal, buffed the skills you stole?

Improv with the +10% bundle damage won’t cut it as a Stolen Item buff but Stolen Item buffing traits would be nice.

That or add more slots for more stolen items.

@ OP, its because steal on its own is rather underwhelming. Also taking every trait for steal makes for a neat build but it isn’t overpowered even with all those bonuses.

Steal w/o traits is a 35 second gap closer with mostly situation skills as the result assuming you landed the steal and weren’t blind/evaded/blocked/etc. It almost hurts thieves to not spec at all into steal, because you’re then left with a mediocre cooldown. In wvw w/o any steal traits I often spend the majority of the fight looking for someone to steal from that will give me something useful while spamming aa and the some choking gas+cluster bombs. Really I’m just wasting my time cycling through warriors and guardians and end up ignoring steal because unspec’ed its sad.

Saying steal is useless and terrible because other class’s mechanics can do more or are more diverse is flawed reasoning. It is of course extremely useful, we could just do with another option or two. Plus, as with every class, after a while you want some significant changes to keep it interesting. The problem with thief is you already have the tools to pretty much counter anything outside of a team condition nuke or insane immob+disable spam from multiple opponents. Because of that, the class is disliked and complained about, and consequently nerfed every other patch. It’s still complained about more often than classes which literally do have "achieve all of this with a single button" skills.

@OP
Have you tried running that build you made?
Did you try to compare it’s effectiveness to other popular builds?

yolo swaggins.2570:

:( I guess. Mug looks like an obvious choice but that doesn’t change how I feel for Steal. Compared to ele attunements and mesmer shatters Steal feels so flat. Regardless, thanks for the help.

Then just enjoy the built-in shadowsteps, weapon evades, and the initiative system: AKA the stuff that makes us what we are. If you want your identity wrapped up in a button, there are other professions for that, and that’s why they are different.

Evilek.5690:

Gj you waste 50 Trait point on boost one spell

Steal without trait is useless class skill as hell

I don’t have any trait on my Steal. Yet using it is correctly IS game changing.

The point isn’t to take every steal trait you can. Steal is our class mechanic. Consider what weapon set you are running… what utilities you are using, even what heal skill you are using. You can even look at rune sets… like say perplexity, where a low cool down long range interupt makes sense. Use the traits to allow your steal to complement your build… trying to select multiple steal triats is not really the best idea.

For instance… if you are gaining stealth with a Dagger offhand… having another stealth on your steal is redundant. No reason you can’t just Dagger 5 when you steal.

Husanak.3769:

The point isn’t to take every steal trait you can. Steal is our class mechanic. Consider what weapon set you are running… what utilities you are using, even what heal skill you are using. You can even look at rune sets… like say perplexity, where a low cool down long range interupt makes sense. Use the traits to allow your steal to complement your build… trying to select multiple steal triats is not really the best idea.

For instance… if you are gaining stealth with a Dagger offhand… having another stealth on your steal is redundant. No reason you can’t just Dagger 5 when you steal.

Actually, having another stealth on steal isn’t redundant, it saves initiative. Need stealth? Save the initiative, steal from the enemy. You saved 6 ini AND you’re in stealth + got something to use. Why waste 6 initiative on a CnD when you can Steal and get it for free?

RyuDragnier.9476:

Husanak.3769:

The point isn’t to take every steal trait you can. Steal is our class mechanic. Consider what weapon set you are running… what utilities you are using, even what heal skill you are using. You can even look at rune sets… like say perplexity, where a low cool down long range interupt makes sense. Use the traits to allow your steal to complement your build… trying to select multiple steal triats is not really the best idea.

For instance… if you are gaining stealth with a Dagger offhand… having another stealth on your steal is redundant. No reason you can’t just Dagger 5 when you steal.

Actually, having another stealth on steal isn’t redundant, it saves initiative. Need stealth? Save the initiative, steal from the enemy. You saved 6 ini AND you’re in stealth + got something to use. Why waste 6 initiative on a CnD when you can Steal and get it for free?

It really depends how you are building was my point. If you don’t have a lot of options for entering stealth in your build… or even more expensive ones like Dagger/Pistol 2 skill combos then I agree stealth on steal is a great option.

If you have a offhand dagger though… myself I would rather blind when ever I cloak and dagger… as well as cure a condition.

Your point is valid though… redundant may be a strong word. If you are going to run the off hand dagger though… ya healing condition removal and the safety of a blind whenever you stealth I find makes more sense in general.

Zero Day.2594:

@OP
Have you tried running that build you made?
Did you try to compare it’s effectiveness to other popular builds?

No, I was actually just playing around with stats and traits. This is just something I noticed and wanted to get other thieves’ thoughts on.

And I just started my thief so I have not really gotten to testing builds.

Each stolen item holds a clue and the key to beating the class you steal it from, figure it out yourself from here.

The stolen skills are far from weak, especially in wvw where you can get stuff from the critters and NPCs on the map. Go figure it from here yourself.

Any thief calling steal weak is clueless, period.

Steal is far from shallow, it is infact the most flexible and divers proffession mechanic just get the right item and your approach to a given fight will change drastically.

Another free hint: Hidden Thief is really good for D/P to get those quick backstabs in, it is kind of redundant (even sometimes counter productive)with D/D where you will steal to CnD.

Evilek.5690:

Axelwarrior.9084:

Evilek.5690:

Steal without trait is useless class skill as hell

A free gap-closer that gives you an additional skill?

I would be laughing if I wasn’t confused

Sorry but you’re ridiculous.

Mesmer F1 F F3 make burst,invurnerability and daze

Necromancer F1 18k+ HP with 5 skills

Warrior F1 ? No comment 8k Eviscerate in sPvP with axe, Massive aoe with bow, Big stun with mace and all this with 6 sec CD !

Engineer with powerfull kits

vs

Thief steal stolen horrible skills with 35 sec CD ? http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Steal

Mesmers need illusions to use their Shatters and, unless traited, they’re not particularly strong. The distortion is quite good, but on a pretty big cooldown (and, again, you need illusions)

Death Shroud is the Necromancer’s only defense mechanic and it’s very weak against multiple opponents. And it requires Life Force.

Eviscerate is indeed a hard-hitting skill, but only when it crits and uses full adrenaline. But, just like all the Burst skills, it’s a very obvious animation and easy to dodge.

By “powerful kits”, I suppose you mean the Toolbelt skills. I don’t see why they’re better than Steal.

If you think the Stolen skills are horrible, then you’re probably just bad with Thief.