So, stealing is fun, and stealing itself is greatly customizable via traits. The stolen items, however powerful they are, lack situational versatility and re-usability that really plays up the opportunist mechanic of this core thief ability.
Currently, you steal, and you get a random thing, usable once, and you’re done. You wait until steal recharges, or if you’ve held on to it for a while you steal something else, then use that once.
Stuff I like about stolen items:
Stuff i dislike about stolen items:
So here’s an idea: What if stolen items worked more like ele conjures or Engineer kits?
For instance, you steal a rifle. Currently, that rifle is good for a single high-power shot with knockback.
What if, in stead, that rifle rested in your f2 button, and you could swap to it cooldown free like an engineer kit, and swap back to your weapons with weapon swap? In addition, simply make F3 an “instantly use all avaliable charges” button that is analagous to the way the skill works now. Now, mind you this is a limited use ability, and nothing nearly as powerful as a kit or conjure, but keep in mind the “ammunition” counter on ele conjures. This use-limiting mechanic allows the conjures to be pretty powerful but still fairly strategic.
Obviously, we don’t want to time limit stolen items. We stole them, they’re ours until we use them up. At the same time we don’t want them being a disproportionally large amount of the thief’s combat abilities. They’re opportunistic items we keep for a while until we find a good use for them.
Now, imagine every stolen item had five charges, which replace initiative when you’re holding it. The 1-5 skills cost a corresponding amount of charges, with the current powerful stolen item option as #5. So, in the rifle example, 5 is the knockback shot. using it costs five charges, and thus consumes the rifle. Now imagine you had a less powerful shot with no knockback availiable on #1, a short cripple on #2, a decent bleed on #3, and a self-knockback with light initiative gain on number 4.
Now, you’ve got options!
Maybe you’d like to use the big positioning shot and eat the whole thing to create distance… or maybe you’d like a mildly inconvenient knockback to gain a little initiative, and to have one charge left for a 1200 range shot for pulling or finishing later.
Maybe you’d like to combine 2 and 3 for some cripple and bleed support.
Maybe you’d like to just use 1 five times because you don’t have 1200 range weapons and it’s extra dps while closing on or fleeing from a target.
Maybe you have other combinations that you’d choose based on the opportunities stealing and your current combat situation afforded you.
Axe whirl not good in your condition spec? What if in stead you could chose twice for two bleeds?
Don’t need the extra stealth? What if you could use feathers five times for a single target blind in stead… or just use one and save the other four?
What if in stead of eating all the boons from that ectoplasm at once, you could in stead eat a little… then a little more later for less duration and number of boons?
The possibilities are exciting and I think it would add a lot of depth and utility to steal, perhaps even so much you’re not really annoyed by the cooldown of stealing because your stolen items can have a longer shelf life if you want to use them that way.
(edited by PopeUrban.2578)
I proposed an idea similar, but simpler, than this in the Devs post about thieves here. But 1000 posts gets it lost.
I think the solution should be that when you steal, you still get the one time use items as is. When you steal an item, it slots into your F2, F3 and F4 buttons – meaning you can steal up to 3 items. If you steal more than that without using an item, it is handled as a ‘first in, first out’ – so the oldest stolen item is replaced with the new stolen. Using an item triggers a 3 second global c/d on F2 – F4 (subject to balancing, but stops axe stacking bursts, etc)
Doing this will allow people to prepare their thieves for battles, adding a much deeper level of tactics. Doing this will allow thieves to set up tools without losing access to steal. Doing this is pretty much all I think is needed to bring thieves complexity level to where it needs to be to allow a high skill-level/curve balance. Plus I don’t think it would be a difficult task to code – the hardest part is figuring where to put 3 squares in a bar that is already crowded by the initiative.
I don’t know if you know this but goop and axe whirl are amazing. Even though the ele skill has a chill, I agree with you that it is terrible along with shard and claw. There are a few other rare stealth that are pretty bad, but in general, the rest are amazing.
Axes deal high aoe dmg, while you can move, and is a whirl finisher that will continue to deal the damage as you’re running/teleporting away… and will even continue to deal damage for a short while after you dodge.
Goop is a chaos field, that deals 1k crit ticks for the entire duration (free dps) while continuously apply conditions to all foes inside the aoe. Sure people can exit the aoe but the field is still there so it acts as a form of soft cc and can be a game changer depending on which conditions get applied.
If all steals were amazing, then it would make the mechanic insanely op (even more so than it already is :P).
On my build, steal gives me initiative, fury, might, swiftness, high burst damage, poison on foe, an instant shadowstep to my target, can move me out of harms way EVEN IF I’M HARD CC’D if I use it right, and applies any on crit/on hit thing I may have active at that time. AND it gives me a steal item which is basically a free ability take just kind of comes with. That isn’t even everything it can do. For people that trait for it, they can have it rip boons, give vigor, grant stealth (which could mean even more initiative), and daze the target.
And not to mention the whole 10% extra damage thing while you hold your “useless” stolen item… that if you save it, can use it against your target and steal another bundle to get back that 10% again.
Also your suggestion about having multiple uses just doesn’t make sense. You can’t individually consume initiative so how would you activate the bundle unless it was used to completely replace your weapon skills or utilities. Also having to add in completely new keybindings would be a hassle in the least and just add an unnecessary level of complexity to the amazing mechanic.
If you don’t have a use for the stolen item then waste it at an opportune moment… it’s not doing you any harm just leaving it there.
I proposed an idea similar, but simpler, than this in the Devs post about thieves here. But 1000 posts gets it lost.
I think the solution should be that when you steal, you still get the one time use items as is. When you steal an item, it slots into your F2, F3 and F4 buttons – meaning you can steal up to 3 items. If you steal more than that without using an item, it is handled as a ‘first in, first out’ – so the oldest stolen item is replaced with the new stolen. Using an item triggers a 3 second global c/d on F2 – F4 (subject to balancing, but stops axe stacking bursts, etc)
Doing this will allow people to prepare their thieves for battles, adding a much deeper level of tactics. Doing this will allow thieves to set up tools without losing access to steal. Doing this is pretty much all I think is needed to bring thieves complexity level to where it needs to be to allow a high skill-level/curve balance. Plus I don’t think it would be a difficult task to code – the hardest part is figuring where to put 3 squares in a bar that is already crowded by the initiative.
now that actually is a good idea but would also make the skill too strong in my opinion
Particularly I like Engineers stolen item. The gunk (I’m not sure why you mentioned the Rifle when stealing from the Engi instead of the Gunk) is very good, producing multiple conditions and it’s an Ethereal Field (you can get multiple Confussion with P/D or Chaos Armor with D/ and Shortbow).
The general consensus is that Elementalist stolen item is super poor. That one would need some serious change as everyone seems to dislike it, and most elementalists will get rid of the chill from second 1.
Your idea is pretty much how it worked at some point (though it was only just 1 charge).
At some point in development the stolen skill would authomatically replace your skills, and I believe at other point you could press f1 and equip it. Players didn’t like that mechanic because it meant not being able to use their weapon skills.
With multiple charges it wouldn’t be that bad, but they would have ton of new items to balance. Current system of 1 functionality, 1 charge is easier to balance.
Some options people (including me) have sugested over time since development days include:
- Use pockets in your f2-f3-f4 buttons you you can keep stolen items and use them when needed. With a long cooldown for all buttons every time you use one so you can’t spam all your stolen skills.
- Make f2-f3-f4 buttons “steal modes” setup, where you indicate that you’re going to steal something for damage, for control or for support.
- Similar to the previous one, f2-f3-f4 become different skills based on what you stole (like your example but you don’t equip the stolen item).
I think the pockets option would be cool to store some surprises that you think you will later need instead of needing to blow it if you want to steal again.
The only PvP stolen item that need some boost is the elementalist one (and stealing from minions that could have an unified stolen item, like the blinding tuff so it’s not random).
A restriction may be that it forces unique items, so you can’t steal the same thing again until you use it. The ability to steal multiple axes or multiple feathers is where I see the biggest balance concerns.
A restriction may be that it forces unique items, so you can’t steal the same thing again until you use it. The ability to steal multiple axes or multiple feathers is where I see the biggest balance concerns.
With a long cooldown as I said on all 3 pockets each time you use any of them it wouldn’t be a problem and you’re not going to use another one until about 20 seconds (the Warrior’s Axe Whirlwind has that cooldown, and you would need to use a 45 seconds skill 3 times on Warriors to get them).
A cooldown of around 20 seconds on all 3 pockets seems reasonable and avoids spamming of stolen skills (throw gunk + axe would be too powerful using one after the other).
It just allows to save some items if you think it’s still not the right time to use it instead of blowing it to use Steal and its traits again (using the Whirlwing Axe for example, can kill you if you do it at the wrong time in the middle of a hit-storm, or maybe you’re not having H kitten ues and you don’t want to waste your healing seed yet).
(edited by Lokheit.7943)
A post I had to snip out so my reply wouldn’t be more of a book than it is, Sorry about that.
It isn’t a post about steal. Steal itself is just fine the way it is. I said quite as much. It’s a post about normalizing, and more importantly adding some options to the items you get from it so that the mechanic isn’t as one dimensional, and more importantly afford the thief some actual choices outside of “when do I use this thing?”
It’s about adding “how much of it do I want to use?”
I said nothing about the specific stolen items from ele or engineer. I don’t know where you got that idea. Generally, since the update to PvP steals the items are pretty good. it’s about looking at the ele conjure and engineer kit mechanics, and seeing how we can make stolen items a bit less one dimensional.
The suggestion makes perfect sense, but in case the original post was unlear I’ll clarify it.
Again, as much as you may enjoy axe and goop (and they’re great!) they have varying effectiveness based on build. I run a P/D condition spec for instance, so naturally, goop is pretty much the best thing ever. Axe on the other hand, is less damage than simply using my weapons, and is useful only for the whirl finisher to my build. Its not about these two skills specifically, but the intent of the suggestion is that every stolen item should have potentially optimal uses for different specs. Axe is godly on power/crit builds, mediocre on condition specs. Goop is godly on condition specs and marginally okay extra damage for power/crit specs.
The idea is that all stolen items, if they had varying levels of power and abilities, would have optimal uses for all sorts of specs. More importantly, under the proposed suggestion, your stolen items have the potential to do more than just one thing, making their use much more strategic and allowing for much more opportunistic use of the randomly granted items.
Stolen items rest in f2. Hitting f2 brings up the item’s 1-5 bar, replacing initiative display with charges (five circles, diamonds, quaggans, whatever). You can’t use weapon skills while you have it out, so there’s no reason to display initiative (all it’s doing is recharging)
Weapon swap puts away the item, but you can pull it again as long as you still have charges. Stealing and then using the item can be done exactly as it is now. Steal, then hit f3. You still have the option of that single powerful use. F1 steals (and more importantly, f1 is always steal so you can see the steal cooldown while holding a stolen item.)
F3 uses the remaining charges on the item instantly without pulling it out, and displays the icon for whatever item skill corresponds to the remaining charges. When you steal the item has five charges, so it’d be the #5, in the instance of goop this would be… well… the current goop. If you decide you’d like to use the lesser skills so you can get a little more mileage out of your stolen item, let’s say you swapped (f2) and used goop skill 2 (lets say it’s a single target poison and damage), which costs 2 charges. 5-2=3, So now you have 3 charges left on goop. This means you can still use any skill from 1-3 for its cost, and that f3 will now display #3. You can still use #3 from your pocket mid-fight without pulling the bundle by hitting f3 (use all remaining charges) or you can keep the bundle out and use 2 again, then 1. Or you can use 2 again and drop it (weapon swap) and the f3 will be #1 because you have 1 charge left. Basically, F3 is a shortcut it use the most powerful ability from your stolen item that you still have ammo for. On steal that’s 5 (the most powerful) but if you’ve used its lesser skills, then you have less charges, and thus it’s going to be a less powerful ability.
What’s different from the way it was early on in development (the implementation people hated) is that steal isn’t a bundle. When steal was a bundle you HAD to hold it in your hands, and dropping it meant you lost it. It was annoying because once you stole, you were effectively either cut off from your weapon skills, or forced in to using your steal to get them back in stead of saving it for a time you might want to use it.
Under this suggestion steal is more like an extremely temporary engineer kit if you want to use it that way. You can pull it out by hitting its button, and put it away again by pressing weapon swap or that same button again. If you’ve played an engineer you’ll be extremely familiar with how easy kits are to use.
If you don’t ever want to use the lesser abilities, or pull it out in kit form you don’t have to, just hit the f3 button, use all five charges instantly, get the most powerful ability, and never bother with the 1-4 skills. This is exactly the same way it works now, albiet with a second button to use, but honestly, that’s really not much when you consider the three or four f keys other classes require to operate their abilities. heck, if it’s really that much trouble to hit a second button in return for always being able to see the steal cooldown (and having the extra potential ways to use the items), just stick a “quick thief mode” in options like the quick AoE mode.
I hope that explains it a little better.
IMO the problem with the pockets suggestion is that it’s going to take a long time to fill those pockets, and it doesn’t do much to address to spotty value of the stolen items to various specs and combat situations. Sure, it gives you more of them, and that’s giving you a better average chance of having something you can use, but I feel like even with pockets you still run in to the problem of stolen items being rather hit-and-miss for specific specs.
Take attunements, or the necro’s life force, or adrenaline. These are uniformly useful to every conceivable way those classes are built. Ele attunements can be made more useful, but even untraited attunements have spells in them that the ele is going to derive a great deal of value from. Warrior adrenaline is, by default, spec-appropriate all of the time because its effect is related to the specific kind of weapon equipped. Control heavy weapons have a control heavy burst, dps has dps, etc. Life force is uniformly useful to every necro because… well… its a second HP bar.
On top of all that, these mechanics are predictable. I don’t WANT stolen items to be completely predictable, but I think it’s only logical that if we’re intended to be opportunists maybe we should have a few more… opportunities.
That said, “steal modes” is an alternate way to do it with a similar problem. You’re still forced in to “one and done”
What I like about adrenaline is that while being a simple mechanic it has two modes, and varying levels of power. What stolen items lack is those varying levels of power. I’d like to see them work more like bizarro-adrenaline than like the toolbelt or shatters. The toolbelt works because it’s highly customizable. The shatters work because they’re nearly always avaliable. Stolen items are neither customizable nor nearly always avaliable. This means stolen items, mechanically, have more in common with burst skills than they do with anything else. Burst skills have two modes of operation and multiple (simple) levels of power starting at low. I’m proposing five levels of power, starting at maximum and potentially dropping off if you choose not to use the maximum in return for our one randomly selected mode of operation.
(edited by PopeUrban.2578)
I said nothing about the specific stolen items from ele or engineer.
The thread title is VERY misleading if you have no problem in particular with those 2 and is something more general like your posts turned out to be. I see your intention was to make the mechanic work like their mechanic, but the way it’s written, and given how the Ele item is something that most people dislike most will think you want them changed before starting to read you sugestions.
(edited by Lokheit.7943)
When used on an Elementalist, the Ele item is very poor indeed due to their insane capacity for condition removal.
But I think a lot of people here don’t quite realize how insanely overpowered a 10 second chill really is when used on a class that doesn’t have a condition removal at hand. There is a reason why most chills accessible to any class have extremely tiny durations. The 66% movement speed reduction pretty much completely shuts down a melee class and makes most ranged classes sitting ducks to friendly melees. The cooldown increase reduces their damage/utility/healing potential by quite a bit in that duration as well.
Personally the only changes I would make to it is reducing the duration to 5s and making it a ranged attack to compensate.
I wish we could at least dump them if we didn’t want to use them… on P/D stealing to a warrior and getting that stolen is far more harm to you than a benefit. Even if you want to use steal to escape on another set up you would have to use it (expose yourself for quite a while) and then steal after. Yes you can dodge to end it but that’s also a negative thing to have to do. It’s also VERY flashy… a big HERE I AM!!! sign over your head… not at all thief like…
(edited by Aberrant.6749)
I said nothing about the specific stolen items from ele or engineer.
The thread title is VERY misleading if you have no problem in particular with those 2 and is something more general like your posts turned out to be. I see your intention was to make the mechanic work like their mechanic, but the way it’s written, and given how the Ele item is something that most people dislike most will think you want them changed before starting to read you sugestions.
Fair point. I kind of shortened it from the original title which was too long without thinking much about it.
Changed the thread title to be a bit more accurate.
I love this idea, but depending on how long the skill sets lasts, changes to the CD on steal may have to be made.
I’d prefer just a simple change to the steal mechanic.
F1 for steal.
F2 to use stolen item.
I mean the buttons are there. Why exactly they decided to not use them in the first place is beyond me.
It would be nice if they could add a F3 and F4 to store additional stolen items if the previous ones were not used, but that’s just my wishful thinking and would require a drastic rebalance of the current set of stolen items available.
(edited by Kaon.7192)
I’d prefer just a simple change to the steal mechanic.
F1 for steal.
F2 to use stolen item.I mean the buttons are there. Why exactly they decided to not use them in the first place is beyond me.
I second this motion.
I direct you to my age-old, buried post in the Suggestions forum https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Making-Steal-a-TRUE-profession-mechanic/first#post1453633 It sounds pretty much in-line with what you guys are saying, but I have some extra ideas, too.
So, stealing is fun, and stealing itself is greatly customizable via traits. The stolen items, however powerful they are, lack situational versatility and re-usability that really plays up the opportunist mechanic of this core thief ability.
Currently, you steal, and you get a random thing, usable once, and you’re done. You wait until steal recharges, or if you’ve held on to it for a while you steal something else, then use that once.
Stuff I like about stolen items:
- Pseudorandom but generally predictable in effect. It encourages learning the mechanic and what the stolen items do.
- Allows the thief a diverse amount of opportunistic attacks which change relative to what he’s fighting.
Stuff i dislike about stolen items:
- Oneshot abilities with inconsistant utility to various specs or combat situations. Some steals are amazing for some specs but not others (axe whirl, goop, etc.) and some just don’t feel worth the cooldown (Coral shard, ice shard, etc.)
- Low usability. We don’t get the option to use them much due to the cooldown on steal. While some of the effects are certainly worthy of that cooldown (mace stun, fear, etc.) many are not, which leads to an inconsistant usability of a mechanic with a uniform cooldown. It’s like saying all warrior weapon skills have 20 second cooldowns despite some being clearly more powerful than others. it wouldn’t work in that context, and it especially doesn’t work when the selection is not in the control of the user.
So here’s an idea: What if stolen items worked more like ele conjures or Engineer kits?
For instance, you steal a rifle. Currently, that rifle is good for a single high-power shot with knockback.
What if, in stead, that rifle rested in your f2 button, and you could swap to it cooldown free like an engineer kit, and swap back to your weapons with weapon swap? In addition, simply make F3 an “instantly use all avaliable charges” button that is analagous to the way the skill works now. Now, mind you this is a limited use ability, and nothing nearly as powerful as a kit or conjure, but keep in mind the “ammunition” counter on ele conjures. This use-limiting mechanic allows the conjures to be pretty powerful but still fairly strategic.
Obviously, we don’t want to time limit stolen items. We stole them, they’re ours until we use them up. At the same time we don’t want them being a disproportionally large amount of the thief’s combat abilities. They’re opportunistic items we keep for a while until we find a good use for them.
Now, imagine every stolen item had five charges, which replace initiative when you’re holding it. The 1-5 skills cost a corresponding amount of charges, with the current powerful stolen item option as #5. So, in the rifle example, 5 is the knockback shot. using it costs five charges, and thus consumes the rifle. Now imagine you had a less powerful shot with no knockback availiable on #1, a short cripple on #2, a decent bleed on #3, and a self-knockback with light initiative gain on number 4.
Now, you’ve got options!
Maybe you’d like to use the big positioning shot and eat the whole thing to create distance… or maybe you’d like a mildly inconvenient knockback to gain a little initiative, and to have one charge left for a 1200 range shot for pulling or finishing later.
Maybe you’d like to combine 2 and 3 for some cripple and bleed support.
Maybe you’d like to just use 1 five times because you don’t have 1200 range weapons and it’s extra dps while closing on or fleeing from a target.
Maybe you have other combinations that you’d choose based on the opportunities stealing and your current combat situation afforded you.
Axe whirl not good in your condition spec? What if in stead you could chose twice for two bleeds?
Don’t need the extra stealth? What if you could use feathers five times for a single target blind in stead… or just use one and save the other four?
What if in stead of eating all the boons from that ectoplasm at once, you could in stead eat a little… then a little more later for less duration and number of boons?
The possibilities are exciting and I think it would add a lot of depth and utility to steal, perhaps even so much you’re not really annoyed by the cooldown of stealing because your stolen items can have a longer shelf life if you want to use them that way.
I like the basic idea, but it feels like its on the opposite end of the spectrum – instead of stolen items being a bit constricting based on spec, you’re giving the thief access to at minimum 8 different kits – that’s a huge swing in comparison – 40 abilities where there were previously 8, 32 of them new.
I think a good compromise is to give each stolen item 2 (or maybe 3?) one shot abilities. One that favors a Power/crit build, one that favors a condition build (and if you opt for 3, a utility skill)
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