Guild Wars 2

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Thief with staff, rifle, or greatsword might look cool, but any of these weapons will only result into a boring DPS skill set that will not improve the profession what so ever in terms of both strategical and tactical.

With focus, as I have suggested before, they can create an Arcane Thief that not only steals random items, but also an expert at stealing buffs or disabling certain enemy skills. A control oriented Thief that lurks in the shadows. The PvP, PvE, WvW possibilities of this choice makes the Thief more versatile. In PvP, they can actually have the tools they need to defend a node after capping — instead of running away. Mobility will no longer be the only factor in choosing a Thief.

I strongly believe that an Arcane Thief using Focus is the best shot at improving this profession…however the likelihood of this happening really depends on the expertise of the game designer who should have at least several hours in successfully playing a Thief. Alas, this is not the case in ArenaNet so it is more than likely that we’ll get another boring DPS weapon.

That’s what I posted 3 months ago and today I find myself back into using D/D and P/P. The staff has proven to be a boring DPS weapon set without either strategic nor tactical value. They did try; by adding an AoE blind, they did try to make it a tactical weapon but it is not reliable. It is not because Dust Strike is bad, rather Blind is bad.

In GW1, Blind is a condition with a duration. It is a very effective condition used by a squishy profession: the Assassin. However in GW2, Blind is very unreliable since it is a one time use. The main issue is that, the Thief needs to constantly reapply this condition to even have a marginal tactical value. Compare to off-hand pistol, Dust Strike is not initiative-friendly.

The idea of Arcane Thief was suggested 6 months ago by Cronicle.5691;

Shadow arts was a form of control of ether which let the user manipulate shadows to move around or control. Which would be a great use for a manipulation skill and Staff.

And this would give thieves something new, and something that we need. Casting, range, control, and well fits in to a theme that i my self find most suitable and authentic to the thief as a class.

A shadow arts based magic to use for control. This idea is what sold me to the possibility of an Arcane Thief using an off-hand Focus.

Two Focus skills that can bring more tactical value;
Slot #4: Shadow Distraction – cost 4 – no damage. Daze 1/2 sec. Return 1 init on interrupt.
Slot #5: Shadow Snatch – cost 5 – low damage. steals boons. Apply confusion. Steals 2 boons if in stealth.

Ideas for the dual-wield skills;
Sw/F #3 – Shadow Sword – cost 4 – enchant your sword with shadow magic turning your sword into shadow. Damage ignores armor.
D/F #3 – Shadow Torment – cost 4 – stab your target and infuse the wound with shadow magic applying stacks of Torment.
P/F #3 – Shadow Clone – cost 4 – shadowstep sideways leaving a shadowy clone behind. The clone is targetable but does nothing and it doesn’t take damage; lasts for full duration.

These are just some possibility if such weapon is made available.

Just some clarification on the Staff’s tactical issues.
1) Weakening Strike – this skill applies Weakness to the target but this tactical advantage is overshadowed by the skill’s bad effects. The first issue is the animation. It shows that the Thief is doing a spinning attack while moving forward, however, this action is not an evade thus getting stuck to this animation is not good for the profession. The second issue is positioning. The skill will force the Thief to travel the full length instead of giving the Thief an option on how far it wants to travel. This skill becomes useless and a tactical liability when fighting in narrow passages with a cliff on either side.
2) Debilitating Arc – this is the most counter-intuitive skill ever. The skill applies cripple and removes immobilize, but the roll back diminishes this advantage since it places the Thief out of range for melee. The Daredevil spec already have access to anti-immob and it comes with 3 dodge bar making this Staf skill utter useless. If this skill has no rollback but maintain the evade frames, then it will be an advantegous tactical skill.
3) Dust Strike – the idea of this skill is great. However, blind is not a condition with duration thus the tactical value of this skill is very minimal and negligible. If Blind is a duration condition or it can be stacked multiple times, this skill will have advantegous tactical value if it applies 3 stacks of Blind or if the Blind lasts for 3 seconds and it’s not a one time use. Because of the nature of the Blind condition, the tactical advantage of this skill depends on how much initiative the Thief is willing to spend — in most cases, it’s not even worth it to try to apply tactics since Vault has a better return for the initiative spent.

I had this idea as well about focus being an offhand to emphasize the shadowy magic thieves used. The elite spec should heavily emphasize stealth as well

RedSpectrum.1975:

I had this idea as well about focus being an offhand to emphasize the shadowy magic thieves used. The elite spec should heavily emphasize stealth as well

Yes. Since you can only do so much with the off-hand weapon and adding stealth to it will only make it convoluted, the best place to add stealth is in the Elite trait. For instance, the Thief will go on stealth on a successful skill interrupt. This also gives x/P access to stealth which the set badly needs and in doing so opens up build diversity. While DD gives easy access to evasions, this Elite should give easy access to stealth.