Hello Everyone,
I have played as a thief since the Beta and one of the biggest issues surrounding thief balance and build diversity in my opinion is the power level imbalance in the utility skills. Currently I believe that the Deception skills are by far the most versatile and heavily used Utility skills while a few Signets and Tricks see few niche roles and Venoms (without venomshare) and Traps are largely ignored. What are some suggestions you guys have in making all utility skills (not just Deception ones) more useful?
Here are a few of my suggestions
Venoms:
I believe venoms have the potential to provide supplemental condition damage and team support utility for thieves. The general principle is for venoms to not only add conditions to the enemy but add its opposite buffs to the thief and if traited to the thief’s allies
Skale Venom: Increase cooldown to 60 seconds. Causes weakness and vulnerability to the next 3 attacks while granting Protection to the thief on activation.
Ice Drake Venom: Increase cooldown to 60 seconds. Causes Chill on the next 3 attacks while granting thief Swiftness and Vigor on activation.
Devourer Venom: Increase cooldown to 60 seconds. Causes Immobilization on next 2 attacks while granting Stability on activation.
Spider Venom: Increase cooldown to 60 seconds. Causes Poison and burning on next 3 attacks while granting Regeneration
Basilisk Venom: Increase Cooldown to 120 seconds. Causes stone on next attack. Attack is unblockable and grants all boons on activation.
Traps:
Main issue with traps are that they only hit one enemy instead of being AOE. In order to keep Thief traps unique from Ranger traps, this is a suggestion to how Traps should work.
All traps are still placed as a line, and will mark an enemy(s) that moves over it and continue to mark up to X (varies on trap) number of enemies for the next 30 seconds. Within the time frame the thief may activate the trap at anytime hitting all marked enemies regardless of their location. If traps are not activated in the 30 second time frame they are placed back on cooldown. Traps may be “deactivated” placing them on a shortened cooldown.
Shadow Ambush Trap: Combine the Shadow trap and Ambush trap. Marks up to one opponent. Upon activation, thief may shadowstep to marked opponent and summons a thief guild member at the location. Cooldown: 60 sec or 45 sec if deactivated
Tripwire: Marks up to 5 opponents. Upon activation causes knockdown. Removes up to two random boons Cooldown: 60 sec or 45 sec if deactivated
Needletrap: Marks up to 5 opponents. Upon activation causes immobilization and poisons. Cooldown: 60 sec or 45 sec
Blaze Trap: Marks up to 5 opponents. Upon activation causes 1 second daze and Burning. Cooldown: 60 sec or 45 sec
Signets:
For the most part I think signets are fine except for two that need slight tweaks to boost their usefulness.
Assassin’s Signet: Due to its recently buffed passive, only the activated effect needs to change. Active effect: Deal 20% more damage to next 2 attacks. Attacks can not be blocked.
Signet of Shadows: Passive – Increase Movement speed by 25% in and out of combat.
Active – Blind and Protection
Tricks:
Tricks are on par with signets with only a few needing real changes in my opinion.
Scorpion Wire: Needs to hit reliably
Roll for Initiative: Lower initiative regeneration from 6 to 3 and lower cooldown to 40 seconds
Sorry for the long post. What do you guys think? Any suggestions? Post Below!
(edited by Virgil.3869)