Guild Wars 2

Okay, so it’s obvious: we’re going to see way more play for condition builds after the Trait fix and HoT specializations. The thief already has issues with cleansing conditions, and frankly, and it basically dependent on SE to cleanse.

With HoT coming out and forcing us into three trait lines, this is basically going to put SA into an absolutely mandatory position on any given build between the need for good cleansing, a 50% damage reduction in stealth (even S/P and P/P can run Blinding Powder and benefit massively in close-call situations), and Rejuv. ANet has come out repeatedly saying they want to discourage passive play, but frankly, this line, especially in its post-trait-rework form, does so to a degree that’s just blatantly no fun and pulls away from build diversity due to its extreme power and border-line mandatory class features for a low health tier class, like condition cleansing.

ANet’s stance on removing passive play is absolute, and totally justified: they’re removing Infusion of Shadow for the purpose of preventing permanent stealth uptime. Awesome. I’m always for more active play. Unfortunately, though, with the gaps in the class’s base functionality, many players are going to feel obligated, if not required, to take points in a particular trait line to counteract these design issues.

I’ve been asking myself for a long time what can be done to bump thief viability up a bit in skirmishing in sPvP and promoting more diversity in its build options to allow for players to not feel/be totally obligated to use a trait line for particular matchups. I think I found a really solid answer that aligns itself with ANet’s design intentions of the class as a whole and what have been long-time desires of the community.

The changes? Simple. Remove Shadow’s Embrace as a trait from SA, move Last Refuge as an option in the new Adept SA tier, and replace it with a trait that cuts revealed durations applied to the thief by 2s in sPvP and 1s in PvE/WvW, while providing the thief class as a whole the ability to remove one damaging condition when entering the revealed status.

Now hold on there. I know you’re thinking either “OP” or “That’s awful.” And that’s exactly it; this change gives thieves universally more control over how to deal with DoT conditions, and the ability to do so quite well, and the ability to evaluate whether or not it will be worthwhile revealing themselves and possibly getting CC’ed and killed in the process. But simultaneously, this opens doors for counter-play by other classes; they can punish thieves hard by either baiting their reveal for a condi cleanse and locking them down during reveal, or can use range, blocks, or their own stealth abilities to prevent the thief from landing a hit to reveal while loading them with conditions. Of course, this then also requires opponents of thieves to better-track their enemy’s actions as to what they’ll do. Maybe they have SA and RoS/Rejuv, and DPS’ing/burning abilities to kill them while stealthed will ultimately be punishing. But of course, after the first fight, then the answer on how to deal with them is better known. This creates a dialog of back-and-forth between both thieves and non-thieves to counter each other through skilled play, rather than fights being largely decided on who has what build. The SA line then still gets solid cleansing due to its ability to gain stealth and subsequently get revealed more often, but now at a decision-point of utilities or initiative, and when to engage. I’d like to think this raises the skill cap of the class while buffing the minor builds a little bit.

Thoughts and feedback welcome! I’d like to garner some discussion on how a change like this could be applied to keep the class good at skirmishing while not just shelling out unnecessary amounts of damage, getting excess sustain, etc. without building fully into it.