Guild Wars 2

evilapprentice.6379:

In short, I agree. Trading the ability to stealth for protection seems like a balanced trade in my opinion – combined with the fact that sword is incapable of the burst thieves are known for, it’d be a fun addition to the classes options.

I still insist there needs to be something else to tie the spec together however. Access to regen tops my list, but a “confusion on evade” (it’d have to be more than 1 stack tho, since A sword MH spec will rely on power and crit for damage) seems thematically relevant, fair, fun, and balanced imo.

I’m only afraid Confusion on evade would benefit stealth thieves a lot more then others…

D/P Thieves and D/D LDB thieves would get a huge increase in DPS…

Daecollo.9578:

evilapprentice.6379:

In short, I agree. Trading the ability to stealth for protection seems like a balanced trade in my opinion – combined with the fact that sword is incapable of the burst thieves are known for, it’d be a fun addition to the classes options.

I still insist there needs to be something else to tie the spec together however. Access to regen tops my list, but a “confusion on evade” (it’d have to be more than 1 stack tho, since A sword MH spec will rely on power and crit for damage) seems thematically relevant, fair, fun, and balanced imo.

I’m only afraid Confusion on evade would benefit stealth thieves a lot more then others…

D/P Thieves and D/D LDB thieves would get a huge increase in DPS…

D/D LDB maybe, but that spec could use a boost anyway. Its another 1 trick pony thats easily countered. It has 1 Weaponset DPS move that costs 5 Init, it’d honestly be nice if that spec proc’d confusion on evades – it’d add some real skill to the spec, and another way to do condition damage.

Not sure how D/P would benefit much – do missed attacks caused by blind count as evades? HS doesn’t generate evades, so it’d just be your dodges. Hurting a player who is trying to swing-detect stealthed thieves might be nice however. It has the same issue as your proposed Sword mainhand spec as well – confusion that does kitten damage because you have 0 condition damage. In addition, D/P would still be burst focused, there won’t be the time for confusion to do much damage. It works well with Sword mainhand with your proposed trait because its more of a survivable, sustainable DPS spec with built in evade moves (which will punish blindly swinging players, making the spec a nice skill check)

I’ve actually been sad that GW2 doesn’t have any kind of equivalent for the Assassin skill Shadow Form, from the original Guild Wars:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Shadow_Form
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Shadow_Form_

I think it provides enough precedent for some kind of Thief invulnerability or protection, although the mechanics would obviously have to be reworked for GW2.

Daecollo.9578:

Critical Strikes
En Garde
- Increases your critical-hit chance with a sword and spear by 10%.
- Gain 5s of Protection and revealed on critical hit with a sword or spear. (The protection and revealed applied by this trait will not apply when protection is already on the character, this is to prevent boon stacking and the fact that if the pirate is not in melee, he should not gain any benefit from running away.)

This trait allows for a “duelist” type thief who mostly focuses less on stealth and more on staying alive with sustain, the protection allows him to sustain melee combat with other classes, but he is also revealed as well so he cannot stealth as long as he has this protection.

Note: It would also be very nice is sword skills were more fluid like ranger attacks, and had more fluid looking animations, we don’t rely on brute force like warriors, we should be attacking with our movement and body, not just our arms.

Another Note: I would also like to add, that I love pirates, and I would like to see more pirate thieves then ninja thieves…

Sword Traits need a comeback for the Thief, I totally agree.

That said I think that 5s of Protection for simply landing a crit with a Cleaving weapon has the situational potential of becoming grossly overpowered, considering that a Pistol Whip Thief could potentially hit 3 people 8 times in a very small time period.

(As I’m sure you can already see, stacking up/past 10s(+) of Protection for the cost of 5 initiative throws class balance out the window.)

Why not this-
Duelist (Acrobatics, Master Tier)
Gain 3s of Retaliation when you evade an attack. (5s internal cooldown)
Additionally you gain a 25% chance to apply Confusion (2s duration) on a critical hit with Sword.

Uptime on Retaliation is controlled by the internal cooldown, and the incredibly short duration of the Confusion means that stacking anything above 3x stacks will be kitten near impossible unless the Thief sacrifices a ton of damage/stats for Condition Duration. Hell, I’d rock S/P if that suggestion becomes a reality.

Aervius.2016:

Daecollo.9578:

Critical Strikes
En Garde
- Increases your critical-hit chance with a sword and spear by 10%.
- Gain 5s of Protection and revealed on critical hit with a sword or spear. (The protection and revealed applied by this trait will not apply when protection is already on the character, this is to prevent boon stacking and the fact that if the pirate is not in melee, he should not gain any benefit from running away.)

This trait allows for a “duelist” type thief who mostly focuses less on stealth and more on staying alive with sustain, the protection allows him to sustain melee combat with other classes, but he is also revealed as well so he cannot stealth as long as he has this protection.

Note: It would also be very nice is sword skills were more fluid like ranger attacks, and had more fluid looking animations, we don’t rely on brute force like warriors, we should be attacking with our movement and body, not just our arms.

Another Note: I would also like to add, that I love pirates, and I would like to see more pirate thieves then ninja thieves…

Sword Traits need a comeback for the Thief, I totally agree.

That said I think that 5s of Protection for simply landing a crit with a Cleaving weapon has the situational potential of becoming grossly overpowered, considering that a Pistol Whip Thief could potentially hit 3 people 8 times in a very small time period.

(As I’m sure you can already see, stacking up/past 10s(+) of Protection for the cost of 5 initiative throws class balance out the window.)

Why not this-
Duelist (Acrobatics, Master Tier)
Gain 3s of Retaliation when you evade an attack. (5s internal cooldown)
Additionally you gain a 25% chance to apply Confusion (2s duration) on a critical hit with Sword.

Uptime on Retaliation is controlled by the internal cooldown, and the incredibly short duration of the Confusion means that stacking anything above 3x stacks will be kitten near impossible unless the Thief sacrifices a ton of damage/stats for Condition Duration. Hell, I’d rock S/P if that suggestion becomes a reality.

I honestly like the idea, but the idea above was to have perma-protection, but also its controlled by a global cool-down.

Just my thoughts, I love the idea having some duelist styled sword traits, some protection, regen things along those lines sound very good depending how they are done. Retaliation however imho is a terrible idea, Ret. only works by being able to absorb/heal more damage than your opponent takes by attacking you. Thieves cannot absorb or out heal anyone. Having a Ret. trait would make thieves need to take more hits or the trait is useless… thieves already cant deal with hits

First I’ve gotta say this is one of the best threads I’ve seen on this forums for a while.

I too would love to see a more sustained sword thief be an option. As others have said sustained fighting pretty much requires protection (and probably regen) to be effective in pvp. I also love the idea of confusion on the thief, and think it would really suit an evasion heavy playstyle. It would also give condition builds anouther damaging condition they really need to work well.

So how about;

Duelist (Acrobatics, Master Tier Major)
Gain 3 seconds of protection and 6 seconds of revealed when using a main hand sword duel (‘3’) skill.

Disorienting Evasion (Acrobatics, Grand Master Tier Minor)
Cause 2(?) seconds of confusion on your opponent when you evede an attack.

As to regen, Withdraw + 6 Runes of Dywana are one solution, though a built in one might be better, maybe a trait providing something along similar lines?

Fella Feller.4936:

First I’ve gotta say this is one of the best threads I’ve seen on this forums for a while.

I too would love to see a more sustained sword thief be an option. As others have said sustained fighting pretty much requires protection (and probably regen) to be effective in pvp. I also love the idea of confusion on the thief, and think it would really suit an evasion heavy playstyle. It would also give condition builds anouther damaging condition they really need to work well.

So how about;

Duelist (Acrobatics, Master Tier Major)
Gain 3 seconds of protection and 6 seconds of revealed when using a main hand sword duel (‘3’) skill.

Disorienting Evasion (Acrobatics, Grand Master Tier Minor)
Cause 2(?) seconds of confusion on your opponent when you evede an attack.

As to regen, Withdraw + 6 Runes of Dywana are one solution, though a built in one might be better, maybe a trait providing something along similar lines?

I don’t see why protection:revealed should be a 1:2 ratio. Protection doesn’t count for much during PW, as you’re already evading. On demand protection is also pretty powerful – I honestly prefer OP’s suggestion of X seconds on crit (either 3 or 4 IMO), non stacking (IE, you only gain protection on crit if you do not already have the protection boon).

Also, confusion-on-evade would need to be at least a few stacks (2 or 3 IMO) – our primary evade weaponsets are S/D, S/P, and DB D/D – S/D and S/P are power based with 0 condition options, so their confusions will tick for crap – it works for those builds because with this new trait you’re suggesting, you can build a more survivable Sword thief, allowing the time for even crappy confusion damage to add to your attrition win.

As to D/D, it would be powerful to give a constantly evading condi focused spec 2-3 stacks of confusion on evade, but lets be honest, D/D needs it – it’s a 1 trick pony. A second option to doing some damage would serve it well. In addition, it’s a nice skill check – your opponents wont be allowed to just spam AA and wait for it to connect to mark DB’s end; they’ll actually have to learn the timings and counter it properly. This would actually need some playtesting tho – I can see an x/x/x/30/30 ini/dodge focused spec evading 80% of the time and being severely OP.

evilapprentice.6379:

Fella Feller.4936:

First I’ve gotta say this is one of the best threads I’ve seen on this forums for a while.

I too would love to see a more sustained sword thief be an option. As others have said sustained fighting pretty much requires protection (and probably regen) to be effective in pvp. I also love the idea of confusion on the thief, and think it would really suit an evasion heavy playstyle. It would also give condition builds anouther damaging condition they really need to work well.

So how about;

Duelist (Acrobatics, Master Tier Major)
Gain 3 seconds of protection and 6 seconds of revealed when using a main hand sword duel (‘3’) skill.

Disorienting Evasion (Acrobatics, Grand Master Tier Minor)
Cause 2(?) seconds of confusion on your opponent when you evede an attack.

As to regen, Withdraw + 6 Runes of Dywana are one solution, though a built in one might be better, maybe a trait providing something along similar lines?

I don’t see why protection:revealed should be a 1:2 ratio. Protection doesn’t count for much during PW, as you’re already evading. On demand protection is also pretty powerful – I honestly prefer OP’s suggestion of X seconds on crit (either 3 or 4 IMO), non stacking (IE, you only gain protection on crit if you do not already have the protection boon).

Also, confusion-on-evade would need to be at least a few stacks (2 or 3 IMO) – our primary evade weaponsets are S/D, S/P, and DB D/D – S/D and S/P are power based with 0 condition options, so their confusions will tick for crap – it works for those builds because with this new trait you’re suggesting, you can build a more survivable Sword thief, allowing the time for even crappy confusion damage to add to your attrition win.

As to D/D, it would be powerful to give a constantly evading condi focused spec 2-3 stacks of confusion on evade, but lets be honest, D/D needs it – it’s a 1 trick pony. A second option to doing some damage would serve it well. In addition, it’s a nice skill check – your opponents wont be allowed to just spam AA and wait for it to connect to mark DB’s end; they’ll actually have to learn the timings and counter it properly. This would actually need some playtesting tho – I can see an x/x/x/30/30 ini/dodge focused spec evading 80% of the time and being severely OP.

I was thinking a close to 1:2 ratio for protection to account for potential boon duration, and insure you couldn’t stack up a bunch and/or weave it into a daze rotation. On demand protection is powerfull yes, which is how most builds that can actually fight succcsfully in a sustained fashion can do so. Having it on crit has a few problems – it’s RNG, it heaviely limits the builds that can access it (to offensive types which probably shouldn’t have/need it at that), and it can’t be rellied upon.

As to confusion, I mostly agree, but remember condition duration can be increased, and that many attacks hit at a rate of faster than 1 per second – dodging a hasted 100b or QZ Crossfire spam would give you a lot of stacks – these need to not last longer than a swing or two to not get out of hand. It should still be enough to give an evasive LDB build a base level of a stack or two, and help cover the bleeds. It might want to be a bit higher (or even lower!) though, as may the times for Prot and Revealed. Would have to actually see it in practice to make calls on the exact amounts, I figured thouse should be at least ball park.