I should state at the beginning of this that I do have a nicely geared thief, although I have moved away from playing them. However I do play Pvp, fractals, dungeons and general PvE content along side thieve’s. When I look at thieve’s in my mind they basically get reduced to 2 functions that help or support a team;
stealth and damage.
1) they stealth party members to help get them through tricky parts of dungeons, or stealth a downed player to push a clinch revive situation.
2) They can have high spike damage and share venoms. However in foe types veteran or higher their shared venoms and spike damage are basically drops in the bucket with how large some enemy health pools can be.
The thieve unique skill is steal. Often this ability is just used as a gap closer or to promote a secondary function attached to the steal itself, whether it be poison or stealth etc.
If the thief had a diversity of different steals that were more orientated to group play this could greatly help with how they effectively help a team, much the same as guardian has different virtues. It would be positive and interesting to see what would result in thieve’s having 3 or 4 kinds of steal;
1) Their current one which provides an additional attack/buff depending on the target.
2) The targets next skill is disabled in PvE/ a random utility is disabled for 7 seconds in PvP.
3)8% of their current HP bar is returned to thief and 2 conditions transferred in PvE/ 8% of their current health Pool is returned and any existing conditions on the target extended by 5% in PvP
4) The next enemy attack cast time is increased by 50%.
These are obviously just ’idea’s’ To give a general example about the potential of what could be done. However I choose these idea’s for the reason that in PvE boss content it allows thieve’s to contribute more than just stealth/spike damage. With Boss abilities being repeatable and health pools currently being large a disabled skill will not remain disabled for so long that the team just doesn’t face it gain. In PvP some of these abilities would result in bunker breaking making pure bunker builds suffer windows of where they may not be able to chain one powerful defense after another in a rinse -repeat fashion. It also retains the a value of the steal will directly place the the thief on their target and with their current state of low Hp/ mediocre toughness and reveal makes for a risk/reward situation of where they may go for it, or they may hold back because not enough escape mechanisms are off cool down and it runs to high of risk of them basically getting made into a splat mark in the middle of the node.
I would personally appreciate moments of Ginva whirling reflection in HoTW is skipped a round because of a good steal. I would enjoy one of Lupi’s massive Aoe all encompassing attacks being slowed down by 50% and I would greatly love when a thief engages a target to provide a quick high damage spike and it goes wrong that they have a last ditch option to get out again and regroup without all of the rest of the team having to now revive them because the poor bugger only had 14kish health and just got caught by a single one off attack. (Which in things like categorized fractal can often happen from the Ettin when engaging the fire shaman because of his model colour being almost identical to the ambient background colour.)
Just idea’s that could improve thief play and actually give them options to be highly tactical where the team benefits in positive ways because of their presence.
(edited by CntrlAltDefeat.1465)