Guild Wars 2

Shizzlenit.7648:

Heres a pic of my Thief’s stats.

Your stats are what I strive to achieve :O! If you don’t mind sharing, what gear do you use? and what is your trait setup? I’d really appreciate the advice

reserved for 3rd slot skills part 2

reserved for 3rd slot skills

=== Sword Skills: ===
4) Whirling Snake:
4 Initiative
Instant Cast
Combo Finisher: Whirl
Damage: 320
Range: 150
Spin in place once dealing damage all around the thief hitting up to 5 enemies. Each enemy hit gives 3 seconds of Fury, with a maximum of 9 seconds, to the thief and up to 4 (Possibly more?) party members.

Potential Uses:
-Group Utility (Buffing party, clearing conditions with light fields, blinding with dark fields).
-Access to Fury Buff.
-Combo Finisher.
-AoE in melee tool for > 3 targets.

Potential Abuses:
-Initially I was thinking this would be a brainless form of AoEing, and it possibly might be given the current skills and their designs.
-The whirling finisher was added last minute, as I thought being able to whirl repeatedly would be a bit OP. However, looking at the whirling finisher combo results and knowing that they are a bit random in how they are sent out, this may not be too bad an issue.

This skill was designed to provide the thief with an AoE option aside from auto attacks, as that can become quite mind numbing. To ensure that it is not completely useless in a single target situation, the Fury buff was added. Here, I saw potential to fill another gap for the thief profession, the ability to give some utility to the group. There are very few ways to generate Fury as a thief and this would provide them with enough utility to incorporate the move into their rotation. One thing I was toying with here is the duration of the Fury. I initially started with 2 seconds per hit, capping it at 6, as initiative regenerates quite quickly. However, this was pushed to 3 seconds per hit, capping at 10 to address two key concerns. The first is to make it a bit more enticing to use on single targets and the second would be to make the set more appealing in a AoE situation, since there needs to be incentive to jump into melee instead of using the short bow for its superior AoE and on demand blast finisher.

Another concern here was that the sword lacked a reliable combo field finisher. The pistol has both an on demand projectile finisher and a chance at it via auto attacks as well and the dagger has an on demand leap finisher. As such, I believe that the sword would need one to be on par as well and a whirl finisher would be fitting, as it is unavailable for the thief at the moment; at least on land.

====

5) Dust Field:
5 Initiative
1/2 Sec Cast
Damage: 0
Combo Field: Smoke
Create a small AoE Circle (Say 150 to 200 radius) where the thief is standing that pulses stealth for 1 second. This would generate 3 seconds of stealth per pulse and would have a limit of 3 players who can be stealthed.

Potential Uses:
-Stealth res an alley.
-Drop aggro for a squishy.
-Setup a stealth attack for the main hand’s 1 skill.

Potential Abuse:
-Applying stealth stacks as initiative allows to skip content (Hoping 3 person limit addresses that and blast finishers would trigger debuff preventing stealth if I am not mistaken).
-The “OMG THIEF IS SO EASY TO HIDE Y U NO FIGHT ME LOL” syndrome (I am unsure here but the first thing that comes to mind is raising the initiative cost).

The idea behind this skill is to offer a stealth option that is what I would deem to be in the “middle” ground for the offhand. The dagger’s 5 attack gives you a good amount of damage and stealth IF you hit. Thus, I see that as a reward for a risk (Should they evade the attack or if you simply miss). The pistol on the other hand gives you a potential stealth that offers utility. However, both the pistol and sword are unable to stealth with it, but the short bow can use a blast finisher on it to AoE stealth. As such, I wanted a skill that would achieve a role between those abilities and offer the stealth option to the weapons left out. This skill would offer a reliable form of stealth with no damage and both the pistol and sword would be able to access stealth and their associated skills reliably. Additionally, this provides some utility for group members that may be near the thief as well and would reward group organization for timing with the combo field.

I wil edit the Number “3” skills later in the day. Was designing the skills beforehand in my head and work happens to be slow this lovely Friday. Thus, I thought, what better time than now? Haha!

TLDR: Adding a sword offhand can address issues with group buffing, stealth options for certain weapon combos, and provide more utility overall for the thief. If you are interested with that, please take a look at the skills!

I had a few ideas regarding the incorporation of the Sword as an offhand weapon with the Thief profession. I played an Ele and Engineer initially and moved onto the Warrior and got an idea of how important boons were in this game, as well as the utility of skills and how much more enjoyable it is when they mesh well together as a set. I fell in love with the thief profession though but noticed that there were some key things that really stood out:

-A lot of the weapon sets/combinations just had abilities that were not used or did not “mesh” depending on the build of the thief. For example, we know that the Pistol #1 bleeds, but when you are wielding dual pistols, direct damage becomes more of the build’s focus. That takes away the appeal a “bit” from the pistol’s #1. The number #2 skill then became obsolete because the #3 skill did more damage overall because the damage to initiative ratio was better spent on it.

-I had ways to use boons, but it was much more demanding. That is, I needed to spec certain traits to receive Fury. Whereas on my Warrior, it was practically on demand and if I used a strong build, such as the “Sonic Boon” build, I never worried about not having boons on it. Now, I do not believe the thief needs perma Fury. However, a bit more “access” to it would be nice.

-Certain weapon setups were not as robust as they “could” be. For example, the sword has no combo finishers on its own, compared to the Pistol and Dagger’s number 2 skill. additionally, it became a question if you wanted to use those abilities as combo finishers or more reliably as a utility. For example, pistol offhand on a sword COULD do a projectile finisher but wouldn’t timing the blind or the daze be more useful to the group?

With that in mind, I wanted to address the idea that the offhand weapon should mess well with the main hand. That is, it should be complementary and not become dead weight on the character (S/D’s number 4 please stand up, jk!). Not only that, I want to address certain traits of thief that is lacking (A reliable stealth for pistol main hand, group buffing via boons, alternate forms of AoE). I believe that this can be done with the addition of the sword as an offhand weapon for the thief. Additionally, that option would be more practical than making changes to existing weapon abilities, due to the amount of changes that would be necessary and given the amount of work being piled on due to the new content being developed. With that said, here are my ideas for the sword’s abilities as an offhand weapon: