Guild Wars 2

Haha…just pray Anet doesn’t realize that 3s stun on 5 targets with no cooldown is insane. It forces the entire enemy team to either blow a defensive cooldown or dodge and can be used multiple times in a row (run with two revenants for max lol, perma team stun). Comparatively, BV is single target 1s stun on a 40s cooldown that’s blockable. Oh no, how will you survive that…/sarcasm

I haven’t had that issue. If anyone can reproduce it I’ll add it to the list.

Kidel.2057:

Sure, take Jade Winds, but give stealth, no cooldowns and blinks. Oh and Basilisk Venom, that is actually better and impossible to avoid.

Also
Chilled to the bone! (Reaper) – stun 2 seconds, chill for 12 seconds, resistance 2 seconds
Jade Winds – stun 3 seconds
Give Necro Chilled to the bone! and nobody blinks an eye, but give Revenant Jade Winds and everyone loses their mind.

I already replied to this in the JW thread, but basilisk venom is avoidable. Any kind of invuln, block, evade, blurr etc will completely negate it. It’s really just a 1s stun with a 1s cast time and 40s cooldown, which sucks for an elite. The only benefit is it can be pre cast.

Kidel.2057:

Chilled to the bone! (Reaper) – stun 2 seconds, chill for 12 seconds, resistance 2 seconds
Jade Winds – stun 3 seconds
Give Necro Chilled to the bone! and nobody blinks an eye, but give Revenant Jade Winds and everyone loses their mind.

Jade Winds – Radius: 600, blockable, easy to evade
Basilisk Venom – The venom is still used if an attack is blocked, evaded, obstructed, negated by Blind, or if the target has Invulnerability or Defiance.

Jade Winds – 50 energy cost
Basilisk Venom – 0 initiative cost

Plus Thief can use Basilisk Venom while in stealth and unload all its initiative on the enemy.

Do you even Thief guys?

You say “venom is still used” as if it’s a good thing. If they block evade etc. it consumes the stack without doing anything, rendering BV useless. Also, we comment on Jade Wind because it’s a petrify so we instantly compare it to BV. Just because we aren’t comparing a Necro skill doesn’t mean BV isn’t in a very poor spot. And the energy cost of JW is offset by the fact that it has no cooldown. Get a few revenants on a team and you could chain petrify the entire enemy team theoretically.

Rezok.2709:

You can’t compare one skill between professions. Following your logic mesmer should get something similar to backstab when they attack from stealth because, well, thiefs got backstab.

Bad analogy. Mesmers already have great (ranged AoE) spike damage, so they don’t need backstab. Typically BV gives us a single target stun for 1s (since it doesn’t stack) while jade wind stuns up to 5 targets for 3s each. That’s 15 times as potent with no cooldown. Venomshare helps, but depends on entire team coordination and a gm trait to even gain 1/3 of the effectiveness of one revenant skill. We aren’t asking for thieves to get Jade Wind, just for reasonable buffs to BV (cast time, stacking etc.).

There was a topic for this, but I can’t seem to find it so here you go. Please post any additional thief bugs you find, but please keep posts brief and civil. Categories are roughly sorted with more serious bugs first.

Link to the thread in the bugs forum

(SKILLS)

Withdraw: still does not have the extra 10% healing noted in patch notes

Heart Seeker: while under the effects of quickness, the leap distance is significantly reduced

Whirling Axe: dodging to cancel this stolen skill is frequently delayed, or the evade frames do not occur at all, while still consuming endurance

Roll for Initiative: the cast is sometimes delayed instead of instant

Shadow Trap: does not give the extra 5 might when traited for deadly trapper, also does not apply 8 stacks of vuln as the baseline tooltip states fixed 7/28/15

Ambush Trap: does not apply any bonuses from deadly trapper fixed 7/28/15

Infiltrator’s Return: weakness is not removed with infiltrations return unless you use IR twice

Black Powder: has 1200 range, increasing to 1350 with Ankle Shots, should be 900 and 1050

Shadow Shot: traited with Ankle Shots improves range to 1200 (should be 1050)

Cloak and Dagger: If you cast CnD while jumping your sigils have a delayed cast forcing a reveal on a Sigil of Air proc for example

Basilisk Venom: does not stack at all, which seems unintended since it was changed to two stacks baseline

Scorpion Wire: wonky as usual, doesn’t always pull all the way

Steal: stealing in SPvP pregame allows you keep the bundle when the match starts

(TRAITS)

No Quarter: when you apply fury to yourself you gain the additional ferocity correctly, but if someone else applies fury to you, you do not get the additional ferocity for their portion of the fury duration fixed 7/28/15

Practiced Tollerance: only converts base precision to ferocity, ignoring signet, banners, spotter etc.

Keen Observer & Flawless Strikes: unclear if they are working, both traits dont show any bonus in the hero panel, in contrast Hidden Killer shows a 100% increase to crit chance

Improvisation: does not recharge skills activated by traits when the associated skill types recharge (trap from trappers respite, trick from flanking strikes)

Trappers Respite: when traited for trap cooldown reduction, the needle trap on heal displays 24s in the tool tip, but there is a second icd that stays at 30s fixed 8/25/15

Ankle Shots: raises pistol range by 150 but does not state it in the tool tip

Quick Pockets: procs with some items like the Unbreakable Choir Bell, which can be swapped more frequently than normal weapons

(MECHANICS)

Shadowstepping: there may be some pathing issues causing shadowsteps to fail without an out of range or invalid path indicator, and also causing invalid path errors in places where they previously worked

Shortbow: shots get obstructed and do not hit sometimes when there is clear line of sight

Stealth: stealth occasionally ends early and causes revealed without reason and without displaying the revealed debuff, may happen more often when affected by a condition (Thread with related discussion)

Combos: leaping into black powder displays “Stealth” indicating a working combo, but does not grant any stealth. Leaping through or out of the field works correctly

I will update with other issues as they come up.

I agree with your suggestion. Make BV instant cast (really, why are the other venoms instant when the elite isn’t), let it stack duration (it’s currently worse than stun because it can’t stack at all) and do one of the following:

Remove the ability to stun break out of it (used to be that way until nerf)

Add a stack

Change duration to 1.5 seconds per stack

Also, besides likely having higher HP and armor, a DPS revenant can also swap to Jalis on the fly for extra durability or Ventari for heals. We’ll just have to wait and see what their damage is like, but I’m not optimistic.

IGN: Zodryn
Playstyle: PvP mainly, though I’m usually up for dungeons. Interested in fractals and WvW.
Server: GoM
Experience with thief: I play thief almost exclusively (1262 hours out of 1484), and have spent many hours theory crafting and experimenting with all kinds of builds. I usually do well in PvP, and would like to try out some roaming in WvW. I believe that we have the tools necessary to do well even when we are weaker than other classes, but the skill floor could stand to be a bit lower for newer players. At the moment I’m jealous of mesmer and the new revenant spec, but nothing will make me abandon my thief.

I can totally get behind this. Thief should have off hand sword added baseline. If you need some inspiration for how it could work, just look at the Shiro spec… -_-

Lokheit.7943:

The part that makes me sad isn’t Shiro itself, it’s how easy it was to put the weapon swap button and an extra main hand and off hand weapons when people started crying.

I remember during the development days, everyone that wanted to play Thief was asking for an offhand sword, or a rifle, or something, and here we are, literally the least versatile profession in the game, and that’s including the no-weapon-swap professions that have access to other forms of versatility.

I wish with the expansion instead of exclusive weapons for specializations everyone would get a few weapons and this could be used to give the Thief a couple more to close the gap with the other professions.

Yeah, but then we do have dual skills, which add a bit of diversity. I do wish they’d at least respond to all of the thief issues since the June 23rd patch though. Seriously, I feel like we don’t exist. The Shiro spec just cements that feeling.

Dex.6139:

There’s nothing to worry about. All that stuff looks great on paper but I don’t see it stepping on Thieves toes w/o stealth.

Yeah, I don’t think they’ll step on our toes in that regard, though they could step on S/D. Even higher mobility with 3, energy based evade that gives enough endurance for a regular evade besides removing all cc on demand. That would be like making flanking strike give back 25 endurance (based on cost vs regen for each class) and letting sword 2 stun break again.

Unless they make major changes, here is what the Shiro legend gives them. Granted, things cost energy, but that energy regens pretty fast and when you look at our counterpart skills as thieves…I just don’t know what to say. Our elite spec better be freaking great.

1. A large range, AoE, 3 second (!!!) petrify with no cooldown. Costs 50 energy which regens in 5 ish seconds I think. Not a long cast time, and can even be cast faster with quickness. It seems like it deals damage too, not sure though.

2. On demand quickness toggle.

3. Basically roll for initiative with no cooldown and also gives back 50 endurance (thanks for the feline grace change though…), costs 30 energy.

4. Sword 3 skill looks like ricochet on steroids with a shadow stepping swordsman. Grants 7 stacks of might and can act as a gap closer. But you know, ricochet was too hard to balance with that 50% bounce chance.

5. Sword 5 is shadow strike plus scorpion wire basically, great isolating tool. I can live without it, but man that looks fancy.

What do you think about the Shiro legend and how it will affect us thieves? I can only hope they don’t have crazy burst and are more attrition based. Kinda doubt it though, given the consistent “yeah this seems crazy, but you know, we wanted an assassin kind of feel” comments throughout the video. :/

Edit: assuming from your op that you’ve already got them under 50% for the below scenarios.

Well if you’re D/P spam 3 for chasing and blind plus autos or 4 to interrupt a heal until they’re under 25%. Heartseeker is actually not that worth it until that point.

If you’re D/D use autos until they’re poisoned, use HS if needed for chasing but otherwise try for another CnD + backstab and HS after 25% again.

You should be more effective and avoid qq this way.

Venomshare is great for sharing cc as you can chain petrify, immob and chill. It’s fun for a condi build as well, though a bit underpowered even if sharing with a whole group.

Traps are in a similar situation, great for certain utility purposes (10000 range teleport, stealth and 10 stacks might on shadow trap, knockdown and immob to trap inside of caltrops or other aoe), but underpowered if trying to do meaningful condi damage with them directly. Trapper runes are fun, but I usually feel like I’m better off with other utilities.

As clarification, this suggestion is a joke. I would like a new elite though. Maybe a signet (since we have other types already) that makes stealth last longer and the active removes revealed and stealths.

Valvador.4291:

Signets has decent might access, no?

They do, and technically so do traps with deadly trapper, but running entirely traps or signets just for the might feels like a waste. Other classes have better ways of maintaining it. Shadow trap could be a good option and you could still take other utils like shadow step then. Unfortunately deadly trapper is bugged and doesn’t work on shadow trap.

Valvador.4291:

I’ve always been a fan of Hybrid builds. They are interesting, in both WoW and GW2 Hybrid gear gives you “More” Stats. Meaning if you add up the total stat bonus to any and all Stats from Hybrid Gear, and Specialized gear, you’ll notice that you have more Stats on Hybrid overall.

Now the downside is that none of your stats will be as high as the specialized Stats can be from specialized builds. I’m working on a Celestial set for my Necro because he has a good mix for abilities that do direct damage and condition damage, along with having a signet build that grants lots of might.

Unfortunately as a Thief, you don’t get many options for abilities that do good condition AND direct damage. Your signets don’t do good Conditions while providing might, and your venoms suffer by losing utilities.

I really want to experiment with a Celestial Thief build, but I haven’t seen too good of synergy between direct damage and conditions.

Yeah, I don’t think thief has enough survivability to make use of the defensive traits on cele gear and no easy, consistent might access to make up for the lower damage stats. That’s why I recommend sinister. D/D has bleed and poison as well as high direct damage, so adding venoms could make for a potentially good hybrid build.

xXBurningEmberXx.6085:

Zodryn.4216:

I main an asuran thief near minimum height and build. Asura animations are frequently more pronounced than other races so that shouldn’t be an issue (pistol whip for example). Have you switched the camera to center on character height? The only thing I don’t love is how tiny certain daggers are, but there are plenty that look great. I’ve also had multiple compliments on my look in several different armor sets. People notice if you look awesome even when you’re small.

Smallest height? Isn’t that like the size of a cat? Ill try the camera thing. I just hate having a high zoom cuz then I have no spacial awareness… I agree with you on the dagger thing. The only dagger that is long enough IMO is incinerator…

I don’t mean reduce field of view, there’s an option that lowers the camera height if you’re short so you can see yourself better, otherwise it’s more centered on my head as an Asura. I still have a wide FOV.

As for daggers, corrupted are great, incinerator obviously, ascended aren’t bad, sovereign, mordrem, dragon’s deep, chaos, kodan, mistforged hero, peacemaker are all worth a look. There are a couple of “plain” skins that are fairly large as well. Hopefully that helps. No judgement if you decide to switch, although I’ll be forced to refer to you as a bookah.

Arricson Krei.9560:

Zodryn.4216:

I concur. Could replace it with ricochet. Or move flanking strikes up to master and make an adept trait granting stealth on pistol interrupt with an icd to support p/p hybrid and p/p zerk. Combo with pressure striking for hybrid, interrupt for torment and stealth then sneak attack for bleed.

Stealth on pistol interrupt would make d/p even more dominant, let alone giving one skill a ton of utility.

If I could design a trait that would replace Trickster, I’d say…
“Pistol shots have a chance to bounce to an additional target. Pistol range is increased. Gain charges when inflicting a condition. At 10 (or however many) charges, your next attack against an immobilized target will stealth you.”

Lol, it seems really gimmicked towards p/p, but that’s the point. It still can work with other non-pistol mainhand builds if Panic Strike is taken, or with teammates if they have an immob in hand.

I agree about needing to avoid giving D/P more power, so just make it conditional on wielding two pistols. Problem solved. Your idea could work, but it does seem a bit convoluted. Need to get off a bunch of auto attacks followed by 2 followed by another attack. I think it’s cleaner to make it easy access but require good timing (only occurs on a successful interrupt) with an icd of maybe 5 seconds.

Alternatively, let anyone with off hand pistol use it, but make the stealth really short like 1 or 2 seconds. Then it isn’t very useful to D/P since you have no time to reposition for backstab or use it to hide, but P/P can use it for a quick sneak attack (S/P may also be tempted to take it).

Pro tip: switch SR for blinding powder if you run D/P. SR takes 3s and puts a big attack here circle around you. Also if you’re capping in spvp and have to wait for stealth to wear off, that’s wasted time. Blinding powder has custom stealth time on lower CD with near instant activation.

5+BP+2=10s stealth

5+BP=7s

BP=4s

Just make sure you don’t hit anyone with HS if you use the full combo as it will reveal you, unlike using the 5 2 combo by itself.

I main an asuran thief near minimum height and build. Asura animations are frequently more pronounced than other races so that shouldn’t be an issue (pistol whip for example). Have you switched the camera to center on character height? The only thing I don’t love is how tiny certain daggers are, but there are plenty that look great. I’ve also had multiple compliments on my look in several different armor sets. People notice if you look awesome even when you’re small.

I concur. Could replace it with ricochet. Or move flanking strikes up to master and make an adept trait granting stealth on pistol interrupt with an icd to support p/p hybrid and p/p zerk. Combo with pressure striking for hybrid, interrupt for torment and stealth then sneak attack for bleed.

Here’s my thought (unfortunately not possible in sPvP and I don’t WVW much so I haven’t tested it):

D/D, sinister gear, food that gives might on crit

Run skelk and spider venom, play like a normal backstab build. You’ll deal less damage, but with the vuln, torment and poison, they should drop easily after a burst. Instead of trying to stick to them after a failed 100-0 and risk dying, you can run/hide while they die from dots.

So basically, 100-30 direct damage and 30-0 condi. I’d probably run CS, SA and trick. You could venomshare if you’re roaming with a mate, or just go for the sustain to help survival. Could also take DA instead of SA. Improv is great on the off chance it recharges venoms.

I like how they recently fixed a bunch of things for every single class but thief. Mesmer wasn’t in the patch notes either but they should be happy about that as when they are it’ll likely be a nerf alongside any bug fixes they get.

I’d at least like some statement like “we decided not to give the 10% buff to you” and while they’re at it “we also realized we accidentally removed your ability to dodge and that your poison traits need a second look.” Really that’s all I need. And maybe some different trait placement in SA.

How do you guys handle food? I don’t usually WVW but I’m interested in trying this valk build. Should I finish off cooking and make stuff or just buy a bunch? Is it expensive to maintain? I kinda wish you could just toggle certain food effects and then not have to worry about it. Not sure how that would work with it being a consumable though.

Hey all, I love venoms, but when using them specifically for condi damage, sharing seems a bit lackluster. Best case if you share with your whole team that’s 30 stacks of poison and 20 torment on one guy (which is useless because in a 5v1 he’d die in .5 seconds anyway) or 6 poison and 4 torment to each enemy if it gets distributed equally in a teamfight. This assumes everyone gets off 6 successful attacks on their target which is highly unlikely due to dodge/block etc.

The main problem is that if I use an aoe/bouncing ability, charges are used per target hit. Compared to some classes that can cause aoe burning, confusion etc all by themselves, it just doesn’t stack up well even in the absolute best case. Keep in mind I’m talking specifically about the potential condi damage venoms can do. They are still strong due to the cc sharing, I just think the damaging condis get the short end of the stick as you really need more stacks of those.

Previously any 1 attack only took 1 venom charge (so SB1 could bounce and poison 3 people for all 6 charges). That may be a bit too strong, but what if they capped the number of charges a single attack consumed. Ex: cap at 2, if you hit 1 person with choking gas 1 charge is consumed, if you hit 2 to 5 people with it 2 charges are consumed. They could easily make the cap 3 if that was too strong. This would have no effect vs 1 or 2 people but would improve the teamfight potential of venoms. What do you think?

For leveling, d/d with caltrop util and caltrop on dodge is pretty fun. Decent survival with dodges from 3 spam. Run signet of malice and you can jump into a mob and bleed everyone to death with good sustain (it procs on hits from 3 AND on every tick of caltrops). P/D is a more active style but not as good vs many enemies.

Last I used it it was working. If an enemy dodges through it it will trigger but have no effect though (which really sucks). Did you try it on the running golem in the mists?

Asura master race

Also, it should be changed to a teleport like mesmer portal. As is, you can get stuck on pebbles and other silly obstructions when destroying the trap. It needs to just work.

Obviously most of her skills are OP and I don’t think we should get something that over the top. I would like some stealth elite though. Maybe 6s and removes reveal when cast? That could be interesting and provide a counter for sic ’em and lock on.

They should also make a crazy mode for PvP where everyone gets OP versions of their class abilities.

Shadow.1345:

Valk Ammie? Really? That’s one of the amulets I look at and just think “Why? Why is this even a thing?” I guess maybe before with traits tied to stats you could use some sigils and runes to make up for the loss of critical chance but ferocity without perception is like a screen door on a submarine. If you want some sort of bruiser build got with Marauders and Wurm runes to give more vitality and ferocity to what Marauders already offers.

Well it can work with hidden killer but then backstab is basically your only damage. You can also run intelligence sigils, but if you use SB you aren’t as likely to swap for damage dealing purposes. So yeah it doesn’t sound great. The hope would be near insta kills on the backstab but then you don’t need the defensive stat anyway, and you also give up no quarter for HK, which hurts your damage even more.

I recently finished S2, and became very jealous of Caithe’s moveset. Her elite is an 8s stealth that doesn’t reveal you when you attack, and while active, backstab also teleports you to your target. Anyone else really wishing for an elite stealth skill right now? I can already imagine the rage.

Are there even squids in game?

I could maybe accept that since it encourages smarter play, but it’s still a big nerf and would require more than a damage buff to compensate. They could give us double stealth duration instead of 1s extra like mesmers have (seriously, no idea why we didn’t get the same) so we have time to wait out those blocks. That is the only way I would be OK with it.

I don’t think backstab should change. 15% bonus damage isn’t worth getting revealed so easily. Seriously, it happens so often and would make us even more useless in team fights because people will be randomly dodging, using invuln etc. for the team fight and then bam, as a free bonus they also reveal the squishy thief who now has no burst or escape.

Edit: typos, also I’m down with blind on CnD

Here’s my hope for the new elite spec. After studying nature’s master of camouflage, and finding an ancient tome detailing the shadow-shifting abilities of long forgotten assassins, you have learned to infuse your weapons with shadow ink and hide/travel through it.

Initiative is now ink gauge, all attacks spread ink that lasts 5s and depletes the gauge.

F1 steal: same as before but refills ink gauge, leaves an ink trail and doesn’t give stolen bundles
F2 you’re a squid now!: toggle to allow quick movement through ink. You are invisible while hiding in ink, but can still be hit. Ink recharges faster while swimming through it.

Staff skills:
1 – strike your foe, leaves behind puddles of ink
2 – fling shadow ink at your foe, blinding them and leaving a trail of ink between you and your target (range 900)
3 – sweep at your targets legs, crippling them. If they are immobilized, causes knockdown
4 – whack your target in the head, causing vulnerability
5 – leap to your target bringing along a torrent of ink that damages and blinds all nearby enemies on landing (range 1200, uses all available ink, minimum 50%, damage proportional to ink consumed)

Traits:
Minors?
Major:
Identity crisis: cause aoe confusion when you switch forms (5s icd)

That’s all I got so far.

Take Improv. With those utils you have a high chance of getting an instant recharge on something (how about double haste and withdraw). With Improv you can also take thieves guild if you like. 20% chance at instant recharge every 20s. If you use TG then steal sometimes you can get out 4 thieves at once.

There is an image of a thief wielding a new ascended staff that shaman datamined. My prediction is melee staff with stance utilities that give it different effects (I think toggled stances could be cool with a pro/con for each). Most likely will have a leap, though I doubt it’ll compete with SB as even a good leap still isn’t a teleport.

Vieux P.1238:

Gabriell.4856:

Vieux P.1238:

DHawk.2687:

why are so many thieves relying on signets?
there good for one burst, if you miss it your screwed.
@ vieux that build in the vid is ok at best, the only thing i aggree with is the amulet tho
But it’s at least a step in the right direction ^^

Well that’s my hole point. there are builds out there for many playstyle. but remember, unless you hit & perma stealth all the time, you cant play squishies. & they are thieve builds that are hard hitters as well as sustain. I just finished playing vs this team & that thief.. oh man! outch! hurts… the guy had a good build & had skill’s to use it.

ps: remember: thieves got to stay up on there toes for now on. theres no more mindless zombie button squash mash.

What weaponset did he used?

I dont remmeber & i should of asked his build. but any how you thieves players need to test builds & freaking practice. Cuz more & more players are getting better & skilled. So stop the zombie mashing.

I have never “zombie mashed” as my thief. I spent countless hours theorycrafting and testing builds both meta, off meta, gimmick, anything you can think of. Thieves have always been high skill cap (except possibly dire condi builds) and as the easiest class to burst down in the game, we rely on constant awareness and active defenses.

Our evasion has been totally gutted, there are more hard counters to stealth, stealth traits were nerfed, and our most viable build (and I’ve tested a lot) makes us very squishy so if we don’t insta kill you we’re basically toast unless we play at an insane skill level.

Comparatively mesmers have easier access to stealth, safer burst, and warriors can faceroll with rampage, ranger still just presses 2 for an insta kill on zerk thieves, guardians laugh off our damage while burning us down in seconds, eles 1v4 without even thinking, just follow rotations.

You can certainly succeed as a thief due to our awesome mechanics, but with our survival nerfs a thief must be god like to compete with other professions.

Besides that, most of our other builds are seriously lacking. Condi traits are very lackluster, S/D, D/D and P/P are just not good compared to D/P. Our best traits force us into burst, with venoms being the only OK alternative, but only when you’re with someone else. You can certainly run other builds if you like, but you must be extremely skilled. We have variety, but most of it is just not good enough.

WindGodGirl.6405:

Strikes me as unlikely. Why would they double-down on giving out Staffs as a new weapon? On two of the three medium classes, no less?

Rifle seems like the more obvious choice. I’ll be heavily disappointed if they double-dip with staffs.

Well, I wouldn’t mind rifle, but with shaman’s datamine I wouldn’t hold your breath. I just hope if it’s bo staff (which will surely feel very different from druid staff) we get some “vault” skill that finally gives us a leap. Never understood why I couldn’t use heartseeker to cross gaps when so many other professions have leaping skills that let them do that.

We are getting staff. There is an image for the spec in the current .dat file. Looks like melee staff (my guess is stances), though I wouldn’t complain if it ended up being a shadow magic spec.

Hey all, I’m enjoying a lot of the changes since the patch, and Anet has given us some really cool traits, but there are some things that are definitely lackluster at the moment (acro especially). Here are some suggested changes to hopefully make us consider other traits beside max burst d/p.

DA
Dagger Training: 33% chance to poison for 2s with daggers, backstab deals 3 stacks of poison for 3s. (Competes better with mug and helps poison app with d/d hybrid, also you don’t get punished for using cnd instead of death blossom spam)

Trappers Respite: change cooldown back to 10s to match patch notes.

Potent Poison: Increase poison damage boost from 10% to maybe 25%.

CS
Replace ankle shots with ricochet. Roll pistol damage bonus into keen observer minor (maybe only 5% bonus).

SA
Replace Concealed Defeat in adept with Shadow Protector and give it the 20% deception cooldown. Move Cloaked in Shadow to master in place of SP. Create new GM trait

In Plain Sight: Stealing removes the revealed debuff

Acro
Add the vigor effectiveness increase to Feline Grace. Change Endless Stamina to: stealing refills 50% of your endurance. Possibly consider letting Swindler’s Equilibrium apply to other weapons to improve d/d (and SB as well).

I feel like these changes would make people seriously consider s/d, s/p and d/d much more, while keeping d/p strong. Obviously numbers can be tweaked if things were a bit too overtuned.

Feedback? I’d love to get a dev’s thoughts on where they’d like us to be, as it’s currently either venomshare in an organized group or crazy burst, while other builds don’t get much attention.

Justine.6351:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Withdraw
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Haste
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Flanking_Strike_
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pistol_Whip
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Flanking_Strike_

You do realize haste makes you lose endurance, right? Flanking strike is only used on one weapon set.

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.

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.

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.

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?

“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!