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Update on Thieves
CookieTime
Member Posts: 353
in Guild Wars 2
Leontes on GW2Guru made an awesome post on his thief experience and updated our knowledge on its mechanics.
Here are some examples:
STEAL: First things first, still has a 30 second cooldown, but wait!
You first SHADOW STEP to the target, THEN perform the Steal move, so it's not only for when you're in melee, but functions as an Initiative-free, Energy-free infiltration move.
Firefly- Throw Scale, 77 damage, 10s Bleed for 820 damage, 10s Poison for 820 damage <-- one of the best skills I found so far, very high damage over time for very little effort, especially when Steal gets you straight to your target.
-or- Stab, 238 damage, 20s Bleed for 1640 damage <-- another solid move. Stealing from Fireflies = good choice all around.
Final Thought: Steal = not useless, in fact very powerful. It shows they're on the right track with what they want the skill to do. Speaking with the rep there the intent IS for the move to have a sort of Monster Knowledge wild-card factor, but they want it to almost always be a good idea and something you WANT to do, not a tacked on class gimmick. Very optimistic for the future of the skill. Oh and yes, Sleight of Hand feat basically gives you a free Shadow Step/Daze every 30 seconds when you Steal. Good stuff all around.
1) Initiative costs are down across the board. The biggest costs are for the escape/big offhand skills, capping out at 4 pips. Interesting note: Retreating Shot for Pistol offhand is 4 Initiative, but also has an 8 second cooldown, making it the ONLY Thief weapon skill with a cooldown.
2) Initiative regenerates 1 pip every two seconds. It feels very fast in combat, and the only way to effectively burn yourself out is to use 3 4pip moves in rapid succession. If you do that, you have two very good options, Steal (which as you now know, doesn't suck and has an obscenely long range), or Weapon Switch.
3) Each weapon set has its own set of Initiative. Here's how it works, with an example:
- When I have Dagger/Dagger out, I fight and start killing an enemy, blah blah.
- I run myself low on this weapon set, and fire a Dancing Dagger to cripple the enemy, bringing my Initiative down to zero.
- I switch weapons to Pistol/Pistol. I now have 6/10 Initiative. This is different from my previous report of having a full bar on weapon switch.
- Pretty much right as I pull my Pistols, I gain one, being at 7/10. I Body Shot for 2 Initiative, then fire an Unload for 3, bringing me to about 4/10 (since you're constantly regenerating, taking skill activation into account makes things a lot cheaper than they appear).
- My weapon switch is still on cooldown for a few seconds. By the time it finishes, I switch back to Dagger/Dagger, and I'm now at 8/10 Initiative on my new set.
So here's the TL:DR; You DO gain Initiative on your inactive set, at a rate equal to or very similar to your 1st Set weaponry. Ultimately, the built-in cooldown for switching weapons means that whenever you switch, you're going to be at anywhere between 7-10 Initiative on the new set every time, but for some reason the FIRST time you switch while IN COMBAT, you're capped at 6/10 and start regenerating immediately.
Ultimately I never slowed down, and the kiting with the two ranged weapons was amazing due to the way Initiative regenerated.
All in all, thieves seem to be a blast to play and the steal/initiative worries can be put to rest.
You can read the entire post here.
Eat me!
Comments
Thieves still sounds like the most interesting class to me.
I have been looking for something like this in a MMO for a long time.
I was going to roll a thief before this update. No reason to change that decision unless the Ranger gets a lot more love.
I wasn't too enamoured with the Thief initially, but it sounds like it might be one of the more interesting professions to play. Certainly the most active so far. I've just moved it to the coveted position of First Alt.
i just hope its not overpowered in PVP, where speed normally means a lot, i wonder how an old fashioned warrior which looks a little one dimensional to me in the movies is going to handle a thief in a pvp senario. All this is speculation of course, but i tend to play warriors and dont want to just stand around whilst a thief i can do nothing about tears me apart.
other than that the thief does look like an interesting class
Currently Waiting for Guild Wars 2.
Thieves are a glass canon, so make a bit of AoE and they will die.
Also, warriors are masters of ranged weapons as well here, use your musket from beyond the range of her pistols and you kill her easy enough.
Avoiding a class like this in melee is probably a good idea even if warriors can take a lot more punishment.
I assume they will be rather similar to GW1 Assassins, dangerous up close but get in a good hit and they will be a goner. I think thief will be both the hardest and the most interesting to play.
#1 nr1 skill didnt previously have cost i think
#2 Ini regenerated before at 1ini/sec now 1/2sec
#3 unload down from 5 to 3... 4 unloads one after another [due to 3x3 = 9 + regen during shots] CRAZY.
Ima happy since i decided for thief long ago. GJ ANet with steal.
all in all amazing post the kind of which i waited for.
Charr Thief from ash Legion rdy for owning!
I just thought about it.
Does infiltrator's arrow, cloak and dagger and shadow strike "stealth" makes enemies drop you off target?
I could see Cloak & Dagger being great skill to "vanish" from enemies that target you so they have to target you again. Usually gives a lot of rbeathing room or they just "tab" to another enemy.
Cant wait for the game....arghhhh
I'm with you there. I'm really impressed with how different they've managed to make all of the classes but the theif really stands out as something completely new.
I like how they lowered the recharge on the initiative, but also the skill costs, so the combat speed isn't affected, while at the same time giving the option to inflict more spike damage if the player so chooses. More options is always nice to have around.
Eat me!
As well as two seperate initiative bars for weapon sets. So we aren't screwed by having one and always have an option of switching set and unload new skills while other regenerates in the background.
I must say I'm a little leery of that. If a thief has only one weapon, then their damage is regulated by the initiative bar. They can keep their initiative high or low or burst low when they need, but unless they sit at max initiative, their overall output should be about the same.
Once you add a second set of initiative that refreshes behind the scenes though, your overall output can potentially be vastly increased by swapping to that weapon and burning through all your initiative ASAP every time it's available. That would make weapon switching less tactical and more just something you need to do.
And I just want to say before somebody jumps in with that damage isn't the be all end all like in a traditional MMO, yes I know that in the short term, keeping yourself alive or your teammates alive is more important than dealing damage, but in the long run more damage is always better than less. If this technique would let you generate damage bursts every 20 seconds or so (however long it takes a bar to refresh), it would probably be worth doing.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." -Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
Thief was in 3rd place in my list of classes to try, but right now it went back to 2nd again, tied with the Engineer.
Thief seems to become very good and with a simillar gameplay I look for in some games. Fast, shadow-effects and skills, invisibility, traps, dual daggers/pistols or mixed weapons (Sword+Pistol is my favourite weapon set in skills up untill now), steal and, most of all, gameplay skill of a player has much more focus on this class because there's no cooldown (except for that one skill) and there's Initiative (one of the best ways to make a fighting+fast character, just like some fighting and RPG games).