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Thief-Stealing
raptorfalcon
Member Posts: 126
in Guild Wars 2
It had been a while since I read up on GW2 news and updates so I was pretty happy to see the Thief profession announced. However, there is one thing that I just don't get, "Stealing". No matter how I look at it, seems useless. I mean, if I want to apply a blinding condition, I wanna take a skill that will 100% guarantee me I will be able to. From what I read, items "stolen" depend on the monster and there is a group of items from which you end up randomly getting one. Isn't that pretty much useless? What's the point of stealing something when I'm not even sure what I might end up getting? Did I understand wrong? What do you guys think?
Comments
One huge difference between stealing and having to take a skill which causes blindness is that it doesn't take up a skill slot to use stealing.
The random nature is certainly open to debate. Some people think that all the randomness in an encounter should come from not knowing what your enemy is going to do, especially in PVP. Other people would argue that there is always randomness (how much damage your weapon does in that attack, for an in-game example) or how the ball is going to bounce (for a real world example) and that it's important to be able to react to any new circumstances that arise.
Personally, I think the random nature of it might be the most interesting. If it was always one skill you got, that would be an all or nothing proposition. You'd either steal everytime it came up, or you wouldn't steal at all. If stealing always gave you a choice of three skills, I think it would end up being rare that you wouldn't always use whichever one you liked best. If stealing is random, maybe it promotes tactical thinking about how best to use it.
One potential problem I see with stealing no matter what is just immediately throwing it back in the face of whoever you stole it from in order to get your regular skills back.
Hmm, just thought of this. What if when you stole, it didn't change all your weapon skills, but just changed your offhand skills, one to an ability which holds on to the thing and another which throws it. Unfortunately, the third skill changes based on the combination so it wouldn't work (and wouldn't work for shortbow either).
"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
Well in it's current iteration, the Thief's steal is also a good gap closer / interrupt. It shadow steps you to your target & stuns them for 2 seconds and in those 2 secs you can quickly use whatever stolen item you got and then start dishing out melee damage.
I really see melee thiefs using the steal ability a lot and in the process of using it, primary as a gap closer, will soon learn the various environmental weapons that each mob & profession tend to drop. Then you'll begin to see interesting ways the really skilled thieves incorprate the steal mechanic into their strategy. But in the end it depends on how the steal mechanic works upon release, because chances are ArenaNet would change it to be less random (like stealing from an Elementalist would yield the same 5 skills, to be used for X secs) or just take out the shadow step. Who knows.
Skilled players will use the randomness to their advantage.
Once you become more familiar with the possilities, you'll learn when it is/isn't the approrpriate time to perform a steal.
It says that it can't be used often. So continuously stealing until you get the one you want is out of the question. You might want to get something to damage and instead get something to heal you even though you don't need it... regardless of how skilled you are it is useless and you must get rid of it to get your skills back. Of course, I do have a certain degree of trust on Anet and imagine they will polish the mechanic to make it always useful before the game is released.
I don't recall anyone proposing the idea to continuously steal until you get what you want, as a viable tactic. Also I don't see how the current iteration of the steal mechanic cannot be utilized by a skilled & adaptable player. The game needs mechanics like the Thief's Steal and the Engineer's Elixers, to seperate the good from the bad players.
First of all people will use "steal" just for kicks. Having one skill that always give you some wild random effect is fun, and breaks monotonuos grind.
As for usefullnes of the skill
In GW1 mesmer has a steal skill that steals a skill enemy is curently using. (and hopefully will have in GW2 also
)
It was awesome situational skill.
Not only that it was denying skill to the opponent ( especially usefull if it was elite skill )
But it gave you power of monk , necro ...whatever
i disagree.
Stealing might look that way right now and I kinda thought the same thing, initially. However, like some of the others have mentioned, it does look like it can provide some tactical advantages, even with the randomness of the item stolen. The first time I ever saw the Steal skill, for the thief, I automatically likened it to the stealing ability of a Final Fantasy character. The more I read and understand that it isn't the same, I believe that it will be a game-changer in regards to combat. Having a few extra, even random, skills during combat seems appealing.