Guild Wars 2

A brief explination to changes for these skills based on what has been posted as our new traits. To keep it shorter, I’m not posting any suggested changes to the numbers, just a thought on them.

Healing===

Withdraw – Something that has bothered be since the beginning with retreat skills like this that clear immobilize, you can’t aim where to “retreat” to. I suppose that’s the pain that the condition brings but in several cases clearing that immobilize with withdraw actually put me in a worser place (back into the zerg of things). Always wondered if it would be balanced to allow retreat skills to act like a skill shot or have some form of direction when used vs the direction your character is facing, or just allow turning while immobilized.

Hide in shadows- It is nice that this is now part of a skill category so traits can start changing it but even so, I think this skill needs a bump to the healing power scale. Not only does it have a cast time and a rather long cooldown (not suggesting lower the cd in any way), but the loss of healing power for SA thieves, the only ones who would really use this, means SA thieves will want to stay in stealth longer just to have SR heal them back up. I can’t speak for all players but whether against a SA thief or using one, I don’t care for the waiting game.

Signet of malice- The only builds that can really utilize this were fast attacking and evasive, and the go in guns blazing attitude this skill requires can be quite interesting but it has a very large fall off point in group and solo fights. Group fights the bombardment of AoE’s is likely never going to be recovered and in solo the healing doesn’t proc as much unless the enemy has some AI with them. Since this is an offensive healing skill I’d say increase the healing power base slightly, and change the active to something that works with the nature of this skill like extra healing per initiative missing or gain initiative on use.

Skelk venom- By default, its a downer as are all venom skills. The massively long cooldown in addition to the overhealing over a short duration makes this a poor healing skill choice even on a venom build. The heal on activation I think is a bit silly, there should be some high risk high reward with this skill to where its potential can be devastating if used right. I’d say remove the heal on activation, and drastically increase the number of hits so if a thief gets this off they can turn around and really get back on their feet. Additionally change venom proc’s to not spend more than 1 charge if you miss an AoE attack (maybe in this venom’s case, 2) so all efforts are not loss by 1 condition (blind). Given thief has a low health pool this would be great for them to heal back up and for venom share thieves it would provide great group support assuming numbers are balanced out.

Elite===

Dagger storm- Now that it is a trick it can be buffed a little via traits but it still has the major problem of exposing a thief to melee attacks. I’d suggest increasing movement speed while active so thief has a little better use of this skill outside of projectile reflection especially after it’s stability duration was changed.

Basilisk Venom- Kind of the least “elite” skill out there but it’s chosen for its opening potential for almost all thief builds. I suggest adding “remove 1 boon” because the use of it during a fight isn’t as powerful as before a fight. During a fight enemies will either have stability or be prepared to stun break or have a fix on you to keep you from getting that combo off again, atleast this way you can deal with 1 of the problems.

Thieves guild- These guys look great for a split second and then they just fall off. The long cooldown and the weak effect they have to offer being both low on survivability and utility makes them the least ideal choice for any thief. Either look into buffing them with things like stealth (possibly upon activation and during the fight for a stealth attack), throwing down a smoke screen, the dagger thief using death blossom as a method of evasion, and both attacking much quicker to help with focus firing a target down. As of now they are far to predictable and easily killed off, that needs to change and simply lowering the cooldown won’t fix it at all.