Guild Wars 2

Due to the new revealed skills, I am re igniting this old thread of mine that takes the thief into a more evasive gameplay, and also to spark suggestions about new skills that remove revealed/ make us immune to revealed.

I would love to see implemented to the thief down the track new weapons and weaponskills and utilities that focus more on being slippery through blocks and parry’s and evasion [Flashing Blades(gw1 skill), Critical defenses(gw1 skill)/more shadowsteps]. Right now thieves rely heavily on stealth for survival and im ok with that because I love my thief >:D.

Weapons like kyoketsu-shoge could be a 2 handed weapon that rely on complete evasion to become effective and shadow stepping around your opponents. I will put up some skill ideas in a future post to show you what I think. These would of course utilize stealth but will be much more heavily geared towards evasion.

In a future post, I will put up some skill/utility ideas that will give you some idea of what I’m thinking.
The first idea is Shadow Form, also a gw1 assassin skill, which could be a new Guild Wars 2 thief elite

X seconds: Enemy Spells can not target you. Evade all attacks. You may still attack. Also breaks stun. This would be a great way to start gearing towards the evasion builds and would really bring out some unique thief gameplay.

The second Flashing Blades: Elite or utility
X seconds, 75% chance to evade attacks. Whenever you successfully evade an attack, your attacker takes X damage

Those are my first few ideas.

Suggestions welcome =]

AS well as these new evasion skills, I want to see skills that make us immune to revealed/ removed revealed.

Like Blinding Powder. Removes revealed before stealthing and blinding:

First of all, i would like to say all of your idea’s are way too OP for them to be implemented in the game at the current state.

What i do like about the idea is that, unlike in gw1, in GW2 there are not really skills that punish a player, or reward opponents for spamming skills like crazy.
In GW1 you had to be carefull when to attack and when not to becasue of hexes (empathy, insidious parasite) but also enchantments and stances (bonnettis defence, flashing baldes, whirling defence). This obligated players more to know all the skills and hexes, and this made for much more tactical and skillfull gameplay.

In GW2 the meta of most classes (engineer, mesmer, necromancer, warrior) is just to be constantly casting, spamming skills, swapping to another set spamming skills again leading to very little skillfull gameplay. (I want to give the example of engineer gameplay here where most engineers are just swapping sets blowing all cooldown swapping another set. This because it puts out so much dps that enemies cant even go near, and it is difficult to counter)

There is confusion and retaliation of course, but they don’t quite work to the same extent, in the fact that they are not class specific enough (just a general boon and condition) and also easily removed.

What i would like is more class specific skills (and not general boon or condition) that allow to counter those builds that just involve mindless spamming. Projectile refelecting skills are a good start, but it has to go further than this. I want skills that counter signetuse, skills that counter melee attacks, skills that counter use of aoe skills, Skills that counter summons. Such specific skills that can counter certain builds will make GW2 meta much more diverse and interesting, as was the case in GW1 pvp (Best pvp mmo i ever played).

Over and out!

theres a way to run flashing blade actualy without running it on evade

The principe of the elite is to make foe unable to strike you due to the light reflecting on your blades right in their eye. You practicaly blinding them with a shine of light to prevent them from striking back. How the elite could work is that for 15 second every of your auto attack cause blindness to mobs in a 300 ft radius. That way we keep the cool principe behind the flashing blade without making it a constant dodge. How it would be designed would look like…

Flashing blade
type: trick
Cooldown: 210 second
Effect: for 15 second all of your attack apply blindness to every ennemy target in range
range: 360 ft

In theory this works the same way necro blind spam in plague form is done and allow you to strike a target with impunity for a set amount of time and this for as long as you can keep hiting it.

kyubi.3620:

theres a way to run flashing blade actualy without running it on evade

The principe of the elite is to make foe unable to strike you due to the light reflecting on your blades right in their eye. You practicaly blinding them with a shine of light to prevent them from striking back. How the elite could work is that for 15 second every of your auto attack cause blindness to mobs in a 300 ft radius. That way we keep the cool principe behind the flashing blade without making it a constant dodge. How it would be designed would look like…

Flashing blade
type: trick
Cooldown: 210 second
Effect: for 15 second all of your attack apply blindness to every ennemy target in range
range: 360 ft

In theory this works the same way necro blind spam in plague form is done and allow you to strike a target with impunity for a set amount of time and this for as long as you can keep hiting it.

That would definitely be an elite I could get behind, but it might feel pretty OP. Blind is a very strong condition, and thieves have pretty rapid attacks. Even 8 seconds of being able to blind someone on every attack would feel pretty powerful. Plus, I don’t think that’d work with dual pistol thieves who don’t use any sort of blade..

Prince.7198:

What i would like is more class specific skills (and not general boon or condition) that allow to counter those builds that just involve mindless spamming.

Well, new healing skills (most of them) are good start :p

but not enought this game needs more utility more elite and more trait

If they added in more evasion to the thief like the “Flashing Blades” elite suggestion (though I think it would need to be toned down a bit a blind a hit seems a bit powerful) I would jump back onto the thief immediately.

To be fair the only reason I stopped playing it was because I felt we were getting forced into Stealth to much so more evasion would be great.

I would rather see flashing blades added as a grandmaster trait in the acro line. Something like when you successfully evade an attack it deals a certain amount of damage back to the target in the 130 range and blinds the attacker in the 240ish range.

OP? No more so than retaliation especially since it would only trigger on evade. The blind would also prevent excessive amounts of damage as the next attack would miss rather than being evaded. Plus it’s close combat range only for the damage.

Maugetarr.6823:

I would rather see flashing blades added as a grandmaster trait in the acro line. Something like when you successfully evade an attack it deals a certain amount of damage back to the target in the 130 range and blinds the attacker in the 240ish range.

OP? No more so than retaliation especially since it would only trigger on evade. The blind would also prevent excessive amounts of damage as the next attack would miss rather than being evaded. Plus it’s close combat range only for the damage.

I’ve never played Gw1, so i’m unfamiliar with how flashing blades works. However, I could see something like this working. Another possibility (I’m just throwing this out here) could be an elite signet of some kind.

Example:

Flashing Signet:

Signet passive: Every 10th attack causes blindness (blindness: 5s)

Signet active: Cause distortion for 2 seconds (Cooldown: 60s)

Although you might have issues with weaponsets like s/p and p/p which spam alot of attacks…

If you think about it, thieves have access to some form of evasion on their #3 attack with weapons. S/P, D/D, S/D, SB, and P/D has a teleport out and D/P has a gap closer. We do have some form of defensive ability built in to our weapons which is fantastic and I think that’s where it should stay because it makes it universal regardless of what build we have. Our evasion is good but the cost to use it can be a little tasking. If anything I would rather they make our defensive attacks cost one or two initiative but reduce the damage and give us some form of support. I.E. SB #3 you deal dmg, evade, and gain swiftness or Flanking Strike, evade, deal damage, and with LS you steal a boon. Sadly the damage is mediocre and with the nerf to the boon steal is not a highly used ability anymore and was perfect for boon heavy classes. Honestly, drop the cost of FS to two initiative, merge LS in stealing one boon, fix the poor pathing and you have a solid attack. I once thought it would be great to have evasion + a hard hitting attack but realized if it could be spammable it would be considered OP.

Bumping this due to new Revealed skills incoming

Man so many necro’d posts! But i loved my assassin in gw, and would love to see it implemented into gw2

Some time ago I posted a few traits for this very same issue. Right now, it looks like the only good meta for thief is the stealth one.

MakubeC.3026:

Thief:

I think its time thiefs move a little away from stealth traits and reinforce other aspects they have. With this in mind I intended to address the gunslinger, venom/condition and evasion builds.

• Quick hands: If you have two pistols equipped, increase critical chance by 10%. Decrease weapon swap by 30%.
• Surprise entry: When you shadowstep daze for 1.50 seconds two nearby foes. Cooldown 20 seconds.
• Anti-toxine: Gain a random boon everytime you use a venom. (Up to 4 stacks).
• Trained reflexes: When you steal gain evasion for 2 seconds.
• Venomous break: If you are stunned, dazed or knockback while your health is less than 40%, break away and leave a random venom cloud in place. (Poison, Torment, Chill. Cooldown 20 seconds).
• Tainted blood: If you kill an enemy who had a venom you inflicted, recharge that venom. (Cooldown 20 seconds).
• Master of tricks: Gain up to 4 IP when you use a Trick. (Cooldown 15 seconds.)
• Expulsion: When you shadowstep, teleport away a foe in a random direction.
• Bad behaviour: Inflict one stack of confusion everytime you interrupt an enemy.
• Side effects: Poisoned enemies also become vulnerable or crippled.
• Three Stage Traps – Traps now may trigger two times before they are exhausted.
• Boon Traps: Traps remove 1 boon from up to 5 enemies when triggered. (480 radius)
• Forsee: Walking backwards for 2 seconds will instantly teleport you a short distance backwards. (60 sec cooldown).
• Persistent Venoms: Venom application cannot be blocked, missed, or evaded.
• Rewarding Daring: Successful evades grant random boons.
• Master of Signets: All signets can be used twice within 10s before going on a 30% longer cooldown.(not using the second charge keeps the signet on the origional CD).
• Trixter Training: All tricks have their range/duration increased by 300/20%.
• Sneak Attack Master: Auto attacking a target at the 50% health threshold will use said weapons sneak attack. (30 second CD)
• Dagger Training: All dagger skills get a 7% damage boost, and a range increase of 30.
• Down but not out: Downed state skill CD’s reduced by 50%. Downed skills are more effective.
• Impossible to Catch: If your Steal is on cooldown, stun break from CC once every 30s.
• Random charge: Posionous cloud now applies a random condition.
• Flexible Bow: Shortbow skills have their range extended by 300.
• Bandit’s Reward: Increased effectiveness of all stolen objects.
• Dangerous Smoke: All smoke fields now apply poison.
• Trap Education: Traps are now larger. Needle and Trip are persistent for 5s after activation. Ambush and Shadow have increased effectiveness.

Some of the ideas above come from other users.

More evades? Evade is the most broken defense in gw2 because it has no counter.

Mayama.1854:

More evades? Evade is the most broken defense in gw2 because it has no counter.

True that is.
Maybe take half damage?