Guild Wars 2

Here is my prediction for our new elite spec. Sniper/Rifle is the other obvious one, but I think this fits the feel of thief better, and also has a very Th/Mes vibe (we already do some of this with Steal, it’s just not as fleshed out).

Off-hand focus
Manipulations

Here are some example skills

Heal
Shared Recovery: Heal yourself for X. For 5 seconds, healing on your target is reduced by X% and granted to you instead. (alternatively, doesn’t reduce their healing, but gives you a higher % of what they recover)

Utilities (cast time and cooldowns undecided)
Arcane Larceny: Steal one of your target’s utilities, putting it on a 10 second cooldown (adds 5 seconds if already on cooldown). This skill becomes the stolen skill for 10 seconds.
Mental Breakdown: Gain retaliation. For each utility skill your target has on cooldown, they gain X stacks of confusion.
Frustration: Interrupt your target. For each utility skill they have on cooldown, they take X damage.
Memory Loss: The next utility skill your target uses has its cooldown doubled.

Elite
Arcane Echo: This skill will become the next utility you use after activation.

Focus:
Dual skills: Don’t know
4: Blur – Toggle (costs 1 initiative/sec) Each time you evade an attack, gain X initiative and a charge. When this skill ends, gain 1 second of stealth and apply 1 stack of confusion to nearby foes for each charge (max of X seconds/stacks).
5: Mirror Coat – Toggle (costs 1 initiative/sec) Each time you evade an attack, deal X damage to your attacker and gain a charge. When this skill ends, deal X damage to nearby foes for each charge.

F1: Steal – Unchanged (fits the spec very well)
F2: Deceive – Create a clone of your target (!!!) that mimics their actions for X seconds, but has reduced damage and condition duration.

What do you think? Numbers would have to be chosen carefully, as it’s high in utility, but I think it could be a very interesting spec. I also like the idea of a magical thief better than just a sniper (whose role is partially filled by ranger and warrior anyway).

I love spellthieves (one of my favourite specs in D&D, although it was horrible in 3.5)! Pretty sure that this specialization will happen sooner or later – for Thief or for Mesmer. Or both? Who knows :P
Anyway, 100% agree that it’s more exciting than any potential Sniper spec, and I’d definately play it, be it on my Thief or my Mesmer.

Some thoughts on your suggestions:

• Arcane Echo was a Mesmer signature skill, I can’t see that skill becoming a thief exclusive. There were plenty of threads in the Mes subforums requesting this skill. Imagine the uproar if Thief will get it xD
• Some utilities are way too strong and probably won’t happen unless they’re coupled with ridiculous CDs. Arcane Latency or Memory Loss, for example. Those skills are even Elite-Skill worthy!
• Heal skill sounds interesting, but the percentage would probably be very low, since it’s kinda easy to tell when the enemy will use his/her heal skill.
• In general, your suggested utilities (except AL) sound very Mesmery. It’s pretty clear that with the elite specs we already know, the utilities are heavily flavoured by the main class, not so much by the class they’re “imitating”.
• That said, I like your focus suggestions. That’s the “thief-flavour” I was talking about.
• F2 seems a bit useless to me.

Overall, yeah. I really wanna see spellthieves happening in the future :P

“Imagine the uproar if Thief will get it [Arcane Echo] xD”
They get Chronoshift which is like the ultimate arcane echo (they can re-use all weapon skills, heals, utilities, their elite and reset health and endurance), so I don’t think it’s that big of a deal.

“Some utilities are way too strong and probably won’t happen unless they’re coupled with ridiculous CDs”
Depends on the numbers, but yeah they can be strong. You could potentially steal useless skills though, and if you add 5s to a 40s cooldown it’s not a huge deal. Memory Loss could also just add a flat cooldown instead of doubling it. They are very situational and really depend on what your enemies skills are.

“Heal skill sounds interesting, but the percentage would probably be very low, since it’s kinda easy to tell when the enemy will use his/her heal skill.”
Agreed.

“In general, your suggested utilities (except AL) sound very Mesmery.”
True, but look at Dragonhunter. It’s very rangery while still having guardian flavor. The focus skills have thief flavor (active defense with dodging and stealth), the utilities are very GW1 mesmer, but again, steal is the only thing in GW2 that already does something similar. Mesmers in GW2 are more illusionists, not spellthieves.

“That said, I like your focus suggestions. That’s the “thief-flavour” I was talking about.”
:)

“F2 seems a bit useless to me.”
I included it because steal already fits the theme, and this is the ultimate arcane thievery. Steal the entirety of your enemy and use it against him. Even if it did no damage, clones are very distracting (and imagine stealthing and making someone fight themself). You would have to really limit certain things though. Maybe damaging conditions only last one second and control only lasts 0.5s. For example, a necro fears you for 3 seconds, but his clone then fears him back for 0.5s. You can also use it to track targets. Ex: Enemy thief stealths, his clone stealths too and copies his movements so you know if he’s moving left/right, turns and runs etc.

Glad you like the concept!

Zodryn.4216:

They get Chronoshift which is like the ultimate arcane echo (they can re-use all weapon skills, heals, utilities, their elite and reset health and endurance), so I don’t think it’s that big of a deal.

Mesmer was my main in GW1, and it’s still my most played class in GW2, thief probably being the second. I’m a bit biased here. And I’d probably participate in that uproar :P

GIMME MY ARCANE ECHO BACK.

Concerning CD-increasing; take a look at Power Block; a flat CD increase sounds way more likely! I don’t think they’ll ever introduce a skill that doubles CD.

Zodryn.4216:

True, but look at Dragonhunter. It’s very rangery while still having guardian flavor. The focus skills have thief flavor (active defense with dodging and stealth), the utilities are very GW1 mesmer, but again, steal is the only thing in GW2 that already does something similar. Mesmers in GW2 are more illusionists, not spellthieves.

I guess that’s a matter of perspective. Personally, I couldn’t imagine the new Dragonhunter traps being Ranger traps because of their overall design and functionality. On the other hand, I could imagine your suggested Manipulation skills being Mesmer skills. See where I’m coming from? I’d add thief flavour to the point where they wouldn’t “fit” to the Mesmer anymore.

Btw, here’s some stuff that might give some ideas:
http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20040723b
http://dndtools.pw/classes/spellthief/

I know D&D ain’t GW2, but the flavour is the same. Huehue.

Yeah, I get where you’re coming from. I think it’s hard to make a spell that fits “manipulation” and have it not feel like mesmer though. I came up with the other manipulations as a compliment to ALs ability to put enemy spells on cooldown. Any other ideas that feel like manipulation but have more of a thief flavor?

Just for curiosity, other than stealth which can be done with stuff like smoke bombs and the like, what does the Thief have right now that can imply they can suddenly use magic well enough to become Spellthieves?

Ephemiel.5694:

Just for curiosity, other than stealth which can be done with stuff like smoke bombs and the like, what does the Thief have right now that can imply they can suddenly use magic well enough to become Spellthieves?

How would you define a shadowstep?

Ephemiel.5694:

Just for curiosity, other than stealth which can be done with stuff like smoke bombs and the like, what does the Thief have right now that can imply they can suddenly use magic well enough to become Spellthieves?

Stealth isn’t simply hiding. They actually become invisible. They can also teleport. Besides, the elite specs are supposed to be like training in something new.

You’re leaving out a few things:

- Which utilities are getting replaced with the new ones?
- Why should a thief not use this specialization? → What are the traits like?
- How does someone counterplay the skills you have suggested? I see these as being etremely overpowered wen paired with what the rest of the thief has to offer; the only capability your opponent has to negate these effects is to literally do nothing. Put with Panic Strike, I see no way for an opponent to reasonably fight back against the thief or escape.

Thematically it’s interesting, but I think your mechanics design pairs closer to the mesmer, and I think what you have suggested is just way too powerful to be implemented.

I agree that almost anything would be more interesting than the rifle as a specialization weapon. That said, I have a good feeling ANet is going to be lazy with the thief and use it in a pseudo-sniper ranged build that will ultimately make people QQ and demand more generic thief nerfs.

DeceiverX.8361:

- Which utilities are getting replaced with the new ones?

I might be wrong, but I believe you don’t lose utilities with elite specs.

DeceiverX.8361:

- Why should a thief not use this specialization?

Do you want max damage potential with lots of evading that recharges Steal, which provides a bunch of crazy effects? Then you need to run S/D with Deadly Arts, Acro and Trickery. You really won’t gain much from the manipulations unless you really want that RNG spell steal. There are plenty of great builds that will simply not have room for the elite spec.

DeceiverX.8361:

- How does someone counterplay the skills you have suggested? I see these as being etremely overpowered wen paired with what the rest of the thief has to offer; the only capability your opponent has to negate these effects is to literally do nothing.

It depends entirely on the numbers. My idea on F2 was as more of a distraction with very low damage output. If you throw hard CC though, the clone will mimic it. Counter: save hard CC for X seconds until clone is gone or go for it if you have some kind of invuln.

The spell steal is kinda RNG and may not really matter (if they steal something on cooldown, it just adds a few seconds). No significant counterplay, but depending on your build anything the spellthief gets could be garbage.

The utilities that do damage or conditions based on enemies skills on cooldown is totally reasonable. They would only be OP if the numbers were too high, but that applies to anything in the game.

The utility to double one cooldown is probably OP. However, if it had a clear marker and only lasted a second or two, just AA for one or two seconds. Easy counterplay. Or you could make it a flat cooldown increase as mentioned before. Should be fairly easy to balance.

The elite could easily become broken (double shadow refuge etc.), but then they gave mesmers chronoshift. With the right cooldown I don’t think it would be a huge problem. All of these come down to numbers. Cast time, duration, cooldown etc. Chronomancer as a concept is insanely OP. That is, if chronoshift is on a 5 second cooldown. But it isn’t.

Also, I’m really interested in any suggestions. Whether it’s tweaks to my spec, or a totally different type of spellthief. At this point, I’m sure they already have the spec decided, but I enjoy theorizing anyway.

I like this actually.

Umm, you don’t play PvE do you? Because monsters don’t have utilities. (Sorry!)

Beyond that issue, I would like the idea of thief manipulations, except the general purpose of manip skills, (“evade attacks and mislead opponents”), is already covered by deceptions.

Glamours could stand out more, with a shadowy/smoky vibe to them. My other choice would be arcane skills. Instead of changing with attunement, these utilities would have different effects when you’re in stealth, (and wouldn’t reveal you).