Guild Wars 2

Thought I would talk a little bit about some skills that I think should be looked at. These are all skills that I am disappointed in, in some shape or form. Let me know what you think!

1. Pistol Whip. While I cannot say I have any experience using it in PvP, I think synergizing it with Ankle Shots on the pistol-whip portion or giving it a cripple on the first sword hit would help its success rate a little more. It depends too much on Infiltrator’s Strike, Infiltrator’s Signet and Steal. Either that or make it faster still, maybe 2 seconds for the entire channel. Great skill in PvE though, where enemies don’t move too much ^^

2. Bring Ricochet back for pistols or make it baseline!

3. Skelk Venom. I think the cast time is a shade too long.

4. Ambush/Thieves Guild. Can’t help but feel unrewarded for using these skills.

5. Shadow Trap. I think this is the wrong Trap skill to have stun break because it is so awkward. The stun break is only useful when you have the trap near you, which a lot of times is not the case. Maybe modify Ambush into something entirely different that would fit this role.

6. Dagger Storm. I think the hit rate should increase when foes are farther away.

7. Make Deceptions useable underwater (trivial, I know, but they really need some tech for sphere-targeting so underwater can hit its stride)

1. I play a bit of s/p in pvp, and I can confidently say that pistol whip does not need a buff. Yes, landing it is dependant on those skills you mentioned, but it though be, because it interrupts and does huge damage.

2. Totally agree.

3. Agree, all the venom except for BV should be instant cast.

4. I think that TG is fine, if a bit gimmicky. It would be really nice if ambush spawned the thief on the trap rather than wherever the thief who cast it is. It’s current functionality is kinda silly.

5. Ambush is just a generally clunky skill to use seeing at it requires line of sight for the return.

6. Dagger storm is fine I think. It’s not meant to do a ton of damage.

7. Lol underwater.

alot of them just to say…

• Ricochet needs to return to increase Pistol and Shortbow Range to 1200 and adding for Trick Shot 1 more bounce, while letting Bullets in general bounce once

• Cluster Bomb should not cause Bleeding, it should cause Vulnerability and Burning for an increase initiative Cost of +1 Its Damage portion when shootign it and not exploding it should get increased, so that it definetely deals more damage, than when you let it explode, because the Explode part is, when you want to cause Conditions rathenr that high direct damage.
  Remove the 1 Bleeding from undetonating and change it into a high stack of Vulnerability.
  So Undetonated = High Direct Damage and say 8 Stacks of Vulnerability
  Detonated = Medium Multi Hit Damage for 1 Stack of Vulnerability and Burnign per Hit

• Choking Gas should get changed from Poison to a pulsing Torment and should daze enemies for 1 second. Increase also here the Initiative Cost by +1, because all that choking definetely should interrupt a foe, exactly how it worked before in GW1. Pluss makign the Shortbow alot better at controling the enemy movements…like it should do

• Infiltrators Arrow: Should get reduced Initiative Cost by -1 and should reduce the Cooldown of Steal when successfully blinded a foe with it by a fix 15%. So when your Steal CD is 30 seconds and you blind a foe with IA, then your Steal Cooldown will get reduced by 6 seconds uprounded making it a very good move to use it to become quicker able to Steal again

• All D/D Skills have I described, how they should get improved in an other Thread, will post the Link with the Edit
  https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/What-if-CnD-had-shadowstep-in-it/first#post5371024

• Body Shot shouldn’t immobilize, it should launch a foe away

• Black Powder should Stealth a Thief also, if the Health of the Thief is under 33% health

Increase in general Velocity of all Harpoon Ggun Skills by 50%

• Piercing Shot: Increase Damage by 50% and turn Bleeding into Torment

• The Ripper: Increase the Damage of this Skill by 100% and let it deal also instead of 3 5 Stacks of Bleeding

• Deluge: Rename that Skill to "Wave Shot*

• Escape: Rename that Skill to Poisonous Retreat, Increase the Poison Stacks to 2 per pulse.

• Disabling Shot: Change it from Cripple into Daze and increase its Skill Activation from 1 to 1 1/2 second. Let it also Steal Boons that you receive then.. Increase Initiative cost by +1

• Ink Shot receives now like the poison Attack an Ink Trail that will stay for some seconds and blinds all foes that come in touch with it per second.

• Flanking Strike (Spear) Rename the Skill to “Elusive Strike”, so that finalyl not two different weapons share a same skill name anymore. Increase the Range of this Skill from 150 to 300

• Ninetail Strike: Reduce the initiative Cost, and improve the Skill, that it blocks all incoming hits and not only the first one, for its whole animation time and first then you do the counter attack. Increase the Numbmer of attacks from 7 to 8, so that the amount of hits with its final strike fits to the skill name, so that it has a total of 9 hits and not 8. Add Bleedings for each successful hit.

• Tow Line: Increase its range to 1200 and add Immobilize to it instead of cripple.

• Shadow Assault: Reduce the Initiative Cost from 7 to 6 and add a Shadow Step function to it. Thief desperately needs more mobility with spear…

So much for the weapon skills

I think choking gas should become “inferno” applying burning instead of poison and being a fire field so we can stack some might

Healing & Utilities:

• Hide In Shadows: should get Cool Down reduced from 30s to 25s and should cure also Torment

• Signet of Malice : should receive on its activation the effect, that it steals your enemies Healing Skill instead and sets it on Cool Down. The passive Healing needs also a little buff of say 20% more. Increase therefore the Cooldown to 20s

• Skelk Venom: Needs its CD reduced to 30s its duraction therefore decreased to 20s Hits by Skelk Venom should heal slightly lesser, therfore shoudl deal Hits with Skelk Venom on the Condition Slow. Reduce the amount of charges from 5 to 3

• Withdraw should count as Stun Breaker also. Increase the Cooldown from 18 to 20s
  ——

• Merge of Blinding Powder and Smoke Screen with the CD of Smokescreen. Using Smokescreen blocks Projectiles and makes you go into Stealth then, when you place it directly at your location. Smokescreen is now a Ground target Skill

• Merge of Shadowstep with Infiltrators Signet by turning the active effect of Infiltrator Signet to exactly the effect of the Skill Shadowstep, that you ss to a foe and when you return to your positiion, you lose 3 condtions and then the Signet begins to recharge.

• Merge Signet of Shadows with Signet of Agility:
  Passive:
  Grants 25% increased movement speed and Precision based on your level
  Active: You gain for a short while Super Speed and you lose a Condition that you give to your targeted enemy. if you have at that moment no Condition, then you blind the foe.

• Assassins Signet. Reduce Cooldown to 30s like all other Utility Signets. Increase the 15% Damage to 20%, so that you actually deal also more damage, because you lose at the moment of the activation also alot of Power..so its kind of counterproductive to lose power for gaining more attack damage, when increase of damage doesn’t really outweight the lost power …
  You gain now also Fury on activation for 10s!

• Ambush is now useable under water and lets you directly summon for a while a helping thief npc that will use Spear Skills.

• In General are all traps now useable also under water, they turn into Mines when used under water, which automatically explode, if enemies get too near to them and deal aoe damage.

So: Needle Trap = Needle Mine
So: Shadow Trap =Shadow Mine that works under water a bit differently, then on land, here it will be an underwater aoe blindness with teleport to marked by it foes that let it explode
So: Trip Write = Shock Mine, causing foes to sink or getting stunned either

• Haste and Roll for Initiative: should get merged for that 60s of cooldown…

• All Venoms should be moved and merged to F3 and F4
  Skale Venom + Spider Venom = Neurotoxic Venom for F3
  Devourer Venom and Frostdrake Venom = Paralyzing Venom for F4

Elite

• Dagger Storm: It should give the Thief also besides of Stability either Protection or Resistance in that time to make it harder to remove Stability so simple to instantly interrupt that Elite with a single stupid boon removing fear >.< where Stability should protect you from this crap, so that a fear actually removes only the protection/resistance instead of the Stability.

• Thieves Guild: Improve the Skill Sets of them, let them attack faster, give them better A.I to evade attacks to survive better and most especially, let their attacks remove boons. Reduce also the Cooldown from 180s to 120s

• Remove Basilisk Venom from the game and replace it with a complete new Elite Skill, like one that resembles a bitt to the kits from the Engineer to allow it the Thief to exchange their weapons skills with Kunais, large Wind Spirit Shurikens and normal small Shurikens and so on, to pack out the “Assassin Throwing Weapons” practically, letting this Elite drop 1 of 3 random Weapon Kits, which you use then to exchange out with them your Weapon Skill Bar.

1: Shuriken Set = Medium Ranged Conditions
2: Kunai Set = Medium Ranged Critical Direct Damage
3: Dual Swords Set = Melee Ranged Hybrid with Mobility.

This way would the Thief receive some more Skill Versability and would become a bit more unpredictable, if they could use with that Elite some powerful Assassin Weapons.

And finalls use all the potial created by the skill mergesto fill in the end the created gaps with some cool new and useful skills that complement the Thief Class.

I dont even remember the last time I used a trap skill, scorpion wire, or caltrops….

few ideas i posted some time ago
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/few-QoL-changes-i-d-like-to-suggest/first#post5174944

Tricks

Withdraw still needs its base healing increased by 10% like what was said since its cool down got increased to 18s.

Haste should have its cool down reduced to 50 seconds like engineer’s Elixir U.

Roll for Initiative should have its cool down reduced to 40 or 45 seconds to make it more on par with ranger’s Lightning Reflexes.

Scorpion Wire in general is very buggy/unreliable. Its velocity should be increased or whatever else it needs to make it much more reliable. A damage increase would also be nice, as well as crippling the pulled target. Its cool down could maybe be reduced to 15 seconds depending on how it feels after the above changes.

Caltrops should have its cool down reduced to 15 seconds, its duration reduced to 5 seconds, and its cast time reduced to 0.5 seconds. This would make Caltrops have the same up time overall as it has now, but it would be much more useful/accessible. Currently the long duration is wasted since opponents can just immediately walk out of the aoe circle, and then you can’t use it again for another 24-30 seconds. The Uncatchable trait in the Trickery line could also have an added effect of immobilizing an opponent for 1s when you cripple them to help. (10s ICD)

Signets

Signet of Malice should have its active heal reworked similarly to warrior’s Healing Signet. It wouldn’t have to give resistance, but something interesting that would make you want to activate it more in certain situations would be nice.

Signet of Shadows needs something more for its active ability. In addition to blinding, it could either stealth you, stun break, or just decrease its cool down to 20 seconds.

Assassin’s Signet should have its cool down reduced to 30 seconds.

Weapon Skills

[Short bow] Choking Gas should have the poison duration per pulse increased to 3 seconds. It should also apply 2 stacks of poison per pulse. Currently the 2 seconds of poison that this applies is very short, and the damage from the poison that this skill applies is lackluster, especially after poison stacking was introduced in the June 23 update.

This thread also has some nice suggestions overall for thief weapon skills.

I feel like Dancing Dagger doesn’t have much of a point to it right now. A cripple might be useful for pistol/dagger thieves to keep their distance, but in general it feels like they have better things to do with their time and initiative.

Block of text, and nobody ever mentioned Death Blossom? These suggestions can’t be taken seriously…

Dagins.5163:

Block of text, and nobody ever mentioned Death Blossom? These suggestions can’t be taken seriously…

Is Death Blossom the only skill that needs of attention for thieves? That other thread linked in my post includes a suggestion for Death Blossom by the way. Even if it didn’t, or if you have your own idea for reworking Death Blossom, you could just make a post about it instead of putting down every suggestion here without any actual reasons for why they shouldn’t be “taken seriously”.

Signet of Agility: removes 2 conditions instead of 1
Infiltrator’s Signet: gain 2 initiatives on use

i think changing CnD to 1/4 cast would be enough to make most thief happy s/d + d/d thief happy

as far p/d an d/p short bow go there both fine where at

i am not even going to talk about p/p it be garbage forever

utility i would love t o see signet of shadow apply to leap
vemon are fine
trap would be nice if they had a longer active field
trick are fine at momment
decption all fine at momment
elite are all awesome

traits for trick line haste should be lower to 30 seconds
crit line amazing
deadly art line is amazing
shadow art is neat… i like a fix to shadow embrace even if it was just change to 2 seconds in to stealth. 3 seconds is just to hard as con removal
achrobatic line just terrible from minor to grand master nothing in it is even worth looking at for thief.

in overall view thief not in terrible spot as most people claim it just we need a minor tweak to allow all build play style be viable again.

i think that tweak would come in changing CnD to 1/4 cast

Raiden.1375:

Tricks

Withdraw still needs its base healing increased by 10% like what was said since its cool down got increased to 18s.

Haste should have its cool down reduced to 50 seconds like engineer’s Elixir U.

Roll for Initiative should have its cool down reduced to 40 or 45 seconds to make it more on par with ranger’s Lightning Reflexes.

Scorpion Wire in general is very buggy/unreliable. Its velocity should be increased or whatever else it needs to make it much more reliable. A damage increase would also be nice, as well as crippling the pulled target. Its cool down could maybe be reduced to 15 seconds depending on how it feels after the above changes.

Caltrops should have its cool down reduced to 15 seconds, its duration reduced to 5 seconds, and its cast time reduced to 0.5 seconds. This would make Caltrops have the same up time overall as it has now, but it would be much more useful/accessible. Currently the long duration is wasted since opponents can just immediately walk out of the aoe circle, and then you can’t use it again for another 24-30 seconds. The Uncatchable trait in the Trickery line could also have an added effect of immobilizing an opponent for 1s when you cripple them to help. (10s ICD)

Signets

Signet of Malice should have its active heal reworked similarly to warrior’s Healing Signet. It wouldn’t have to give resistance, but something interesting that would make you want to activate it more in certain situations would be nice.

Signet of Shadows needs something more for its active ability. In addition to blinding, it could either stealth you, stun break, or just decrease its cool down to 20 seconds.

Assassin’s Signet should have its cool down reduced to 30 seconds.

Weapon Skills

[Short bow] Choking Gas should have the poison duration per pulse increased to 3 seconds. It should also apply 2 stacks of poison per pulse. Currently the 2 seconds of poison that this applies is very short, and the damage from the poison that this skill applies is lackluster, especially after poison stacking was introduced in the June 23 update.

This thread also has some nice suggestions overall for thief weapon skills.

I like your ideas, especially for Signets, because I feel in general their is a large incentive to not activate them, particularly the Signet of Malice and Signet of Shadows. Assassin’s Signet would get a lot more use if it’s cooldown was reduced, and maybe increase the appeal of actually activating Signets, which I think is lacking in current gameplay.

I also do agree Scorpion Wire’s velocity should be increased as it is very easy to avoid from far away (which is when you want to use it mostly).

If they actually did the changes you suggested to Choking Gas one of my builds would apply 8 stacks of Poison and 6 seconds duration for each pulse of the skill. I think that is a little strong, because I could apply 16 stacks of Poison easily. I do agree it’s lackluster damage-wise, but it is still a useful skill, so maybe only the duration increase.

Withdraw already had its base heal increased with the patch (I remember them stating that on the livestream), so I think it is fine as is.

kaikalii.4198:

1. I play a bit of s/p in pvp, and I can confidently say that pistol whip does not need a buff. Yes, landing it is dependant on those skills you mentioned, but it though be, because it interrupts and does huge damage.

2. Totally agree.

3. Agree, all the venom except for BV should be instant cast.

4. I think that TG is fine, if a bit gimmicky. It would be really nice if ambush spawned the thief on the trap rather than wherever the thief who cast it is. It’s current functionality is kinda silly.

5. Ambush is just a generally clunky skill to use seeing at it requires line of sight for the return.

6. Dagger storm is fine I think. It’s not meant to do a ton of damage.

7. Lol underwater.

I’ll work on playing S/P a little more in PvP and see if I can get any better at it.

Shadow Trap definitely needs a rework so that you can teleport back even if you do not have a line of sight, because the skill’s tool tip says nothing of the sort so I think it is just down to ANet to make sure it does what it advertises. I can’t tell you how many times it has failed when I am in-range in PvP. Also if Destroy Shadow Trap was insta cast instead of 1 1/2 seconds that would fix the stun break problem right there, but that doesn’t help the fact that you would be teleporting away to wherever it was placed initally.

Skelk Venom shouldn’t be insta cast, because it is a heal skill after all and I want it to still have to ability for opponents to interrupt it, but I do think it should be reduced to 3/4 seconds.

I would attest to pw’s power but it’s been a while. If not much has changed in that area in a while then you only use it for control, down cleave, and for sure landings. Also discretionary but those are the main uses. Anyone stupid enough to eat it with a way to avoid it will panic shortly unless bunker- specially if already injured.

Orpheal.8263:

Healing & Utilities:

• Hide In Shadows: should get Cool Down reduced from 30s to 25s and should cure also Torment

• Signet of Malice : should receive on its activation the effect, that it steals your enemies Healing Skill instead and sets it on Cool Down. The passive Healing needs also a little buff of say 20% more. Increase therefore the Cooldown to 20s

• Skelk Venom: Needs its CD reduced to 30s its duraction therefore decreased to 20s Hits by Skelk Venom should heal slightly lesser, therfore shoudl deal Hits with Skelk Venom on the Condition Slow. Reduce the amount of charges from 5 to 3

• Withdraw should count as Stun Breaker also. Increase the Cooldown from 18 to 20s
  ——

• Merge of Blinding Powder and Smoke Screen with the CD of Smokescreen. Using Smokescreen blocks Projectiles and makes you go into Stealth then, when you place it directly at your location. Smokescreen is now a Ground target Skill

• Merge of Shadowstep with Infiltrators Signet by turning the active effect of Infiltrator Signet to exactly the effect of the Skill Shadowstep, that you ss to a foe and when you return to your positiion, you lose 3 condtions and then the Signet begins to recharge.

• Merge Signet of Shadows with Signet of Agility:
  Passive:
  Grants 25% increased movement speed and Precision based on your level
  Active: You gain for a short while Super Speed and you lose a Condition that you give to your targeted enemy. if you have at that moment no Condition, then you blind the foe.

• Assassins Signet. Reduce Cooldown to 30s like all other Utility Signets. Increase the 15% Damage to 20%, so that you actually deal also more damage, because you lose at the moment of the activation also alot of Power..so its kind of counterproductive to lose power for gaining more attack damage, when increase of damage doesn’t really outweight the lost power …
  You gain now also Fury on activation for 10s!

• Ambush is now useable under water and lets you directly summon for a while a helping thief npc that will use Spear Skills.

• In General are all traps now useable also under water, they turn into Mines when used under water, which automatically explode, if enemies get too near to them and deal aoe damage.

So: Needle Trap = Needle Mine
So: Shadow Trap =Shadow Mine that works under water a bit differently, then on land, here it will be an underwater aoe blindness with teleport to marked by it foes that let it explode
So: Trip Write = Shock Mine, causing foes to sink or getting stunned either

• Haste and Roll for Initiative: should get merged for that 60s of cooldown…

• All Venoms should be moved and merged to F3 and F4
  Skale Venom + Spider Venom = Neurotoxic Venom for F3
  Devourer Venom and Frostdrake Venom = Paralyzing Venom for F4

Elite

• Dagger Storm: It should give the Thief also besides of Stability either Protection or Resistance in that time to make it harder to remove Stability so simple to instantly interrupt that Elite with a single stupid boon removing fear >.< where Stability should protect you from this crap, so that a fear actually removes only the protection/resistance instead of the Stability.

• Thieves Guild: Improve the Skill Sets of them, let them attack faster, give them better A.I to evade attacks to survive better and most especially, let their attacks remove boons. Reduce also the Cooldown from 180s to 120s

• Remove Basilisk Venom from the game and replace it with a complete new Elite Skill, like one that resembles a bitt to the kits from the Engineer to allow it the Thief to exchange their weapons skills with Kunais, large Wind Spirit Shurikens and normal small Shurikens and so on, to pack out the “Assassin Throwing Weapons” practically, letting this Elite drop 1 of 3 random Weapon Kits, which you use then to exchange out with them your Weapon Skill Bar.

1: Shuriken Set = Medium Ranged Conditions
2: Kunai Set = Medium Ranged Critical Direct Damage
3: Dual Swords Set = Melee Ranged Hybrid with Mobility.

This way would the Thief receive some more Skill Versability and would become a bit more unpredictable, if they could use with that Elite some powerful Assassin Weapons.

And finalls use all the potial created by the skill mergesto fill in the end the created gaps with some cool new and useful skills that complement the Thief Class.

Holy kitten you should be a balance dev.

This is feedback im talking about right here. too bad anet is too weak and incompetent to make any changes for years, let alone real changes like this.

For me personally, I’d like them to remove the “Detonate Cluster” ability on Cluster Bomb for Shortbow (Skill 2).

There is really no benefit at all to detonating the Cluster Bomb, and in many ways it actually makes the skill weaker. The three smaller bombs, even if they all hit the same target, only amount to the same damage that the larger, un-detonated bomb would do if it just hit normally, only in a smaller area of effect. In addition to that, detonating the bomb causes it to lose its blast finisher effect, which is super important for blasting combo fields.

Lastly, it really impedes our ability to fire the “Cluster Bomb” skill more rapidly, for some more burst dps at range. You have to wait for the skill to land before you can fire the next one, otherwise you’d detonate it prematurely and miss your target altogether.

Unless they rework the detonation and make it so that detonating the bomb is actually worthwile, I really think it should just be removed altogether, because it’s a massive hindrance.

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

For me personally, I’d like them to remove the “Detonate Cluster” ability on Cluster Bomb for Shortbow (Skill 2).

There is really no benefit at all to detonating the Cluster Bomb, and in many ways it actually makes the skill weaker. The three smaller bombs, even if they all hit the same target, only amount to the same damage that the larger, un-detonated bomb would do if it just hit normally, only in a smaller area of effect. In addition to that, detonating the bomb causes it to lose its blast finisher effect, which is super important for blasting combo fields.

Lastly, it really impedes our ability to fire the “Cluster Bomb” skill more rapidly, for some more burst dps at range. You have to wait for the skill to land before you can fire the next one, otherwise you’d detonate it prematurely and miss your target altogether.

Unless they rework the detonation and make it so that detonating the bomb is actually worthwile, I really think it should just be removed altogether, because it’s a massive hindrance.

If they would up the velocity of CB by ~50% it would go a long way towards increasing the ability to successfully hit from range.