Guild Wars 2

The Sniper is a ES for thief designed to give the thief long range capabilities. The Sniper uses Base Lenses as their profession mechanic. Lenses modify your attacks. Your new utility type is Advanced Lenses. They act the same as Base Lenses, but drain initiative when you attack with them activated. You can have as many Advanced Lenses active as you want, but you can only have 1 active Base Lens. Lenses are not on a scope, but on goggles. Your Base Lenses replace steal as F1-F3.

Lenses
Vital Seeker Lens: Your attacks have a 50% chance to inflict bleed for 2 secs.

Brutal Lens: Your critical hits deal 15% more damage.

Quick Lens: You attack 10% faster.

Rifle Skills (All skills have 1200 range unless stated otherwise)
1) Sniper Shot: Very slow auto attack. About 1 shot every 1.5 secs. Deals high damage per attack to make up for it.
—) Sneak Attack: Kill Round: Massive damage charged attack.

2) Powder Bullet: Fire a bullet at your foe. Upon hitting them, it explodes and blinds them and foes nearby to them for 5 secs. 3 initiative.

3) Takedown Round: Fire a large bullet that knocks down the foe it hits for 2 secs. 4 initiative.

4) Cover Fire: Enter a laying down stance. Fire a bullet that dazes for 1/4 second every second at your target, but you can switch targets. 1,500 range. Costs no initiative upon entering the stance, but costs 1 initiative per bullet.
—) Retreating Shade: Cancel your stance. Teleport back 600. Costs 2 initiative.

5) Assassination: Aim at your enemies vital organs for 2 secs. After that, unleash a powerful bullet that deals MASSIVE damage and finishes off downed enemies. 6 initiative.

Heal Advanced Lens
Neutralizer Lens: Heal and equip a lens that cures a condition every time you attack. each attack drains one initiative. If you have 0 initiative, it will not cure a condition.

Utility Advanced Lenses
Scalder Lens: Every time you attack, that drains 1 initiative every time you attack and deals burning for 5 secs with every attack. If you have 0 initiative, it will not deal burning.

Laser Lens: Your attacks are guaranteed critical hits. Every time you attack, drain 2 initiative. If you have 0 initiative, it will not guarantee crits.

Thermal Lens: Whenever you attack, reveal foes in a radius around you and your target for 1 sec. Drains 1 initiative with every attack. If you have 0 initiative, they will not deal reveal.

Force Lens: Your attacks deal 40% more damage. Each attack drains one initiative. If you have 0 initiative, they deal more damage.

Elite Advanced Lens
Focus Lens: Amplifies the abilities of other lenses, at the cost of 1 initiative per attack.
—Vital Seeker Lens: Bleed is guaranteed and cripple for 3 secs is 30%.
—Brutal Lens: Critical hits deal 25% more damage.
—Quick Lens: You attack 30% faster.
—Neutralizer Lens: Cures 2 conditions per attack.
—Scalder Lens: Your attacks have a 50% chance to blind for 5 secs.
—Laser Lens: Deal 10% more damage.
—Thermal Lens: Revealed lasts 5 secs.
—Force Lens: Deal 50% more damage.

Traits on the way.

Sniper thief would be broken a f and very bad for the game. Gunflame and Trueshot were recently nerfed for a reason.

Besides, you can already gib people from range. The only thing you’re missing is another 300 range.

I think the lens concept is interesting for inititive cost, but a sniper would probably be hard to balance since you can spam skills.

It would be cool if they made a supportish specilization that focused on debilitating conditions. Basically a thief that can do a ton of aoe weakness, poison vulnerability and blind being its main source of staying alive.

reikken.4961:

Sniper thief would be broken a f and very bad for the game. Gunflame and Trueshot were recently nerfed for a reason.

Besides, you can already gib people from range. The only thing you’re missing is another 300 range.

We have a max range of 900. Gibbing from range? Not really. Sorry if that came out rude. Just because other rifle skills on other professions are op, doesn’t mean this will be automatically op. Which skills in general are op in this ES?

FrownyClown.8402:

I think the lens concept is interesting for inititive cost, but a sniper would probably be hard to balance since you can spam skills.

Fair point with the hard to balance. That’s why I tried to give high damage skills large cast times and high initiative costs.

there isn’t much utility in your other skills. it doesn’t seem very sniper like to me at all. lot’s of your ideas revolve around knocking down an enemy and high damage. that’s boring.

a sniper’s main job is to scout and assassinate. here’s what’s difficult about a sneak attack for rifle with a sniper concept:

a sniper should be out of sight to begin with. a strong sneak attack would be useless unless it’s used as an escape. perhaps a rifle sneak attack would be something unique like kicking the opponent back and teleporting 600m away and the teleportation would ONLY proc if you hit an enemy.

AA should deal normal ranged damage, comparable to all other ranged weapons. auto attack isn’t really important for sniper, so it can be left plain. MAYBE add a bleed

range 1200

2 could be a long ranged, ground target AoE smoke field to provide for yourself or allies. allies can blast and gain stealth for themselves. maximum allies to stealth would be 5 just like shadow refuge. the AoE field will have blind BUT also have reveal if traited.

range 1200
4 initiative

3 (cannot use in combat!!!!) is where it should get interesting. I like the prone idea, but kneeling would be fine too. it will be the bread and butter of the weapon set AND prevent the class from being OP. kneeling will halt initiative recovery while you’re in it, but it will increase all your skills damage by 15 or 20% and increase your range by 300. of course, it will also prevent movement. there can be a 1 second cast time to get into and out of this stance.

4 can have two separate effects. the first will be rifle butt which stuns for 1 second. press the skill again, and it will knock you both back and stealth you. this will reveal you if you use it in #3

4 initiative for the rifle butt, 3 initiative for the knock back. again, you can only activate the knock back if you hit something with rifle butt. it will also have a time limit before it goes away, just like any other skill with two separate actions.

5 would be your kill shot. costing the most initiative but deals the most damage. if you activate the skill while not using #3, it will only do 60% of it’s true damage if you were to use #3. cast time while in #3 of 1.5 seconds

1200 range
6 initiative.

I don’t really know how I would trait this. maybe there could be another elite specialization in the next expansion, but this is how I would see a sniper thief

I always have some problems if we dont get damage numbers, casting times, cd’s etc.
For example:
Takedown round: 4 Ini, 2 sec knockdown, 1200 range
Headshot: 4 Ini, 0,25 sec daze, 900 range
Now if takedown round had a 1,5 seconds cast time, thus could hardly be used to interrupt a skill the way headshot is, it might be balanced(+no PI without DD)
but how can we tell?

Otherwise:

-I dont think a high damage ranged stealth attack is a very good idea. From a logical and from a balancing perspective this would have to deal less damage than backstab from the front. Dealing more is basically not in consideration, dealing less will be almost useless.

-Assassination’s secondary effect is way overpowered.
In order to execute a finishing blow, you must hit your enemy three times in succession, from close range, with a total cast time of 2,75(normal finisher takes ~3 I believe), and 40s cd.
This one basically allows you to execute any downed from a safe distance with almost zero counterplay.(Unless your enemy can constantly maintain projectile destruction, which would be useless if you would use BV for unblockable)

-Force lense. 40% is too much. Remember this affects all weaponsets, imagine what a burster otp could do with a 40% damage boost.
As I told basically every other concept author I have commented on: base your skills around already existing mechanics. Assassins signet for instance which delivers a 15% boost for 5 attacks.

-Finally your heavy initiative consumption makes trickery mandatory for every build that wishes to use your lenses. That means 2/3 traitlines are already set.
Thats not exactly good for build diversity.

thunderfall.8095:

We have a max range of 900. Gibbing from range? Not really. Sorry if that came out rude. Just because other rifle skills on other professions are op, doesn’t mean this will be automatically op. Which skills in general are op in this ES?

The stealth attack is Killshot from stealth, and with thief’s high damage multipliers

Sniping from stealth itself is conceptually overpowered unless the damage is paltry.

Force lens is hilariously overpowered and I’d be backstabbing for 30k with it lol.

This spec also doesn’t take into account on steal effects like mug, and would break on Quick Pockets.

Thieves will never have a max range weapon simply because of our innate core mobility. The reason we have lower range weapons is because we are already amazing at disengaging from fights via a large number of stealth and teleport options. Combining that wil fighting on the outer edge of weapon ranges would result in a thief that is literally uncounterable.

People need to stop pipe dreams of thief rifle being some sort of stealthy sniper kit. it is never going to happen. If thief gets rifle, it’s going to bet max a 1000 range weapon, and it’s not going to have great burst potential. Rifle will likely be in a ranged spec with lots of CC. Longbow will likely be in a ranged spec with condi damage.

PopeUrban.2578:

People need to stop pipe dreams of thief rifle being some sort of stealthy sniper kit. it is never going to happen. If thief gets rifle, […] it’s not going to have great burst potential. Rifle will likely be in a ranged spec with lots of CC.

So… like this?

FrownyClown.8402:

It would be cool if they made a supportish specilization that focused on debilitating conditions. Basically a thief that can do a ton of aoe weakness, poison vulnerability and blind being its main source of staying alive.

You actually inspired me with that. I made one like that, but still have to type it up. Still have to type it up, look for a “Sabatour ES.”

thunderfall.8095:

FrownyClown.8402:

It would be cool if they made a supportish specilization that focused on debilitating conditions. Basically a thief that can do a ton of aoe weakness, poison vulnerability and blind being its main source of staying alive.

You actually inspired me with that. I made one like that, but still have to type it up. Still have to type it up, look for a “Sabatour ES.”

So… like this?

>.>

Boring. Next elite specialization should provide thieves with ninja weapon kits. End of story. Good day.

Adamantium claws and berserker barrage please.