Concept Class - Thief / Rogue / Espionagist

Originally Posted by Rikimaru

I Was going to give my Rogue CC stealth too at first, but the problem with stealth isn't that it's overpowered, the problem is that it's useless. It's probably the same reason they changed their minds on giving Assassins stealth. In combat, just teleporting up to the person is far more effective than sneaking up on them.

Originally Posted by Rikimaru

Oh my god, I can't believe I didn't catch on before. The purpose of the class isn't to do damage, it's to sneak around the other group, messing them up really bad without actually harming them much. Stealth does make sense then. And you're way of having it work right now is much better than anything I mentioned.
That's a pretty good class if I have it right.

Originally Posted by actionjack

Thief / Rouge / Espionagist


PREMISE:

Stealth is the main game for a primary Thief. Stealth enables a thief to make the first attack, get into desirable locations, and even escape from harm. (see more below on balancing issue with stealth). A primary Thief is also not an attacker. While few skills in Gambling offer nice damage, there is always a risk associate with them. However, they excel in de-buffing their opponent, and distracting them. They can play very well of a role of “Subtle Supporter”, that would aid your ally (or your secondary proff) to make the kill. Spycraft also offers skills that could be devastating when use against opponent team.

I am liking Gambling, but I don't see how Stealth is worth a primary attribute, what inherent effects does it have? Enables them to make the first attack? I don't see how that works. When I read later on I made a new comment.

Appearance:
The usual thief like outfit, with hoods and cloak.

Armor:
Around 55 to 65AL, 25 energy, 3 regen. Other bonus include enable to stay in stealth longer, increase chance of evade, and even move 10% faster.

So their armor can do all these things that should be on weapons? Also, 10% faster speed is even more unbalancing.

Weapon:
Thief actually don’t have any weapon attributes, or skills link to weapons. Usually they would need to depend on their secondary profession for weapon damages. However, a new weapon type is introduce for them.

Umm... Riiight. Even mesmers have their own pathetic roman candles.

Knife: A single hand weapon that is like a dagger or short sword. Have a more varying damage, something like 4-24 slash, and same attack speed as that of dagger. The requirement will link to Stealth and Thievery Attributes.

Inconsistancy? So they do have a weapon afterall and it's stronger than a warrior's sword nearly as strong as an axe. Fast as a dagger but does much more damage than a dagger? Yet they have no offhand... Well I guess that's what you have a secondary for...

SPECIAL CONCEPT:

-Stealth-Stealth, one of those forbidden words in suggestion forum (like guns or level cap). But before you jump to the conclusion that it would be overpowering to have an invisible guy killing you, read on for balance.

You enter a Stealth or Hidden mode upon use of skills. Unless specific the change by skills, several rules follow:

• -When in Stealth, your character will become complete invisible to enemy foe, and a transparent shadow to your ally. You will also not show on enemy’s radar, nor can be found by Ctrl.
• -Your movement is slow down to walking speed (by 50%)
• -You will be prematurely force out of stealth if you attack, use skills (unless they are Silent Skills), take damage, and in some cases, move. (this will be depended on what skill you use to get into stealth). You will still remind in stealth when casting skills.
• -The effect of enchantment or hex will still be shown even while you are stealth. So is carrying an object. (you would see a flag moving in air)
• -When you first enter stealth, all creature that is targeting you will be “broken off” (they will loose their target) However, a stealth character can still be targeted by leaving the mouse selector on them for some period of time (2 seconds). Thus you can still target them if you know where they are (or guess where they are), or can be found by “Scanning” the empty space.

[FONT="Arial Black"]So you consider that to be balanced? I'm not going to get hung up on this, but you could simply avoid death by becoming invisible. If I was at 1 health and I used stealth then you couldn't kill me.[FONT]

Also there is a special rule that apply to all Stealth skills that is call Prolong. Upon using any stealth skills, it will increase the Recasting time of ALL equipped stealth skills by T seconds (this number will stack), thus the more you use in short time frame, the longer wait you will have to use another stealth skill.

• -If you use Become Hidden, you can use that skill next time in 45 seconds.
  
• -If you use Become Hidden instantly follow by Instant Hide, and you will need to wait 60 second before Become Hidden are usable again. And if you do, It will make Instant Hide’s recharge time now up to (45+35 = 80seconds) after it was first cast.

This extended recharge time will go away after the time run up, and if nothing new stack on to it. This is to avoid people who would Hide in a PvP game endlessly.

As can see, Stealth is not that much powerful. Its use come more as a way for you to move your character into desire position before making the first blow (which require good timing and strategy, else you could still be easily detected), rather than stealth kill.

See the skills for more detail.

And potential issue of Stealth Run could be address by giving some mob anti-stealth skills or creature ability, and/or with use of Gates or Guardians blocks.

ATTRIBUTES

Stealth (Primary): For each points in this attribute, you have 1% of evading incoming attack. Also effect the skills relating to Stealth.

So you're saying a primary of this class can have a 16% chance to evade incoming attacks ALWAYS? Stacked with one of many other skills you'd be like blinding all foe's attacks towards you.

Gambling: Chance base skills that does offensive damage, defensive stance, or team-ally support.

Thievery: Skills that de-buff enemy while buffing self. (NOTE: you will not actually steal any item or gold from another player, so there will never be any item lost)

Spycraft: Various of skill that hinder and sabotage opponent team’s strategy and coordination, as well as use for scouting and revealing. (special thanks to CryingWolf for inspirations, as well as suggesting various part of this attribute)

SKILL EXAMPLES

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Stealth (Primary)

Become Hidden
10e | 2c | 30r: (Stealth Skill)
You become Stealth for the next 6…12 seconds. This skill will end if you Attack or use any non-silent skills. All carried Stealth skill’s recharge time increase by 15 seconds. This is easily interruptible in casting.

Silent Killer
15e | 3c | 40r: (Stealth Skill)
You become Stealth for the next 6…12 seconds. This skill will end if you use any non-silent skills, you can still attack. All carried Stealth skill’s recharge time increase by 20 seconds. This is easily interruptible in casting.

Can you say, "A bunch of invisible warriors bodyblocked and raped me, and we couldn't target any of them!"

Still as a Tree
10e | 3c | 30r: (Stealth Skill)
You become Stealth for the next 12…24 seconds. This skill will end if you Attack, Move or use any non-silent skills. All carried Stealth skill’s recharge time increase by 15 seconds. This is easily interruptible in casting.

Instant Hide
15e | 1/2c | 35r: (Stealth Skill)
You become Stealth for the next 4…10 seconds. This skill will end if you Attack, Move or use any non-silent skills. All carried Stealth skill’s recharge time increase by 15 seconds.

I don't see how either of those two would be useful. Also, I don't remember seeing Silent Skill as an attribute at all.

Shadow Run
5e | 1c | 30r: (Silent Skill)
Can be use only if in Stealth. You move 25% faster for T seconds. Effect end if the current stealth ends.

Silent Blade
5e | 1c | 20r: (Silent Skill)
You will remained in Stealth when use this skill. Attack target foe for X more damage.

Quite Healing
10e | 1c | 45r: (Silent Skill)
Can be use only if in Stealth. You gain +X arrows of HP Regen for T seconds. Effect end if the current stealth ends.

Hmm, so 'Quite' Healing will heal the only thing that can kill stealth players -- degen. How's that for unbalance?

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Thievery

Steal Body Armor
10e | 3c | 30r:
This is easily interruptible in casting, and must apply at melee distance. For 8…16 seconds, target foe’s body armor AL is decrease by 75%, and you gain 50% of AL equal to their body armor’s AL. It will also strip all effect of Runes that is on the body armor for the duration.

You're not serious... or are you?

Steal Weapon
10e | 3c | 30r:
This is easily interruptible in casting, and must apply at melee distance. For 8…16 seconds, target foe’s current equipping weapon’s attack power decrease by 75%, and your attack power increase by 50% of that amount. (This only effect the currently equipped weapon, so the opponent can still change to a different weapon with 100% usage)

Steal Skill
15e | 1c | 40r:
This is easily interruptible in casting, and must apply at melee distance. Interupte Target Foe’s current casting skills. For the next T seconds, this skill will be replace by what your interrupted, and target foe can not use that skill for the duration.

Nothing like an easily interruptable 1 second casting skill... It sounds like Arcane Theivery and Arcane Larceny and a combo of mesmer stuff for no good reason really...

Steal Life
10e | 3c | 35r:
This is easily interruptible in casting, and must apply at melee distance. For T seconds, target’s max HP is decrease by 25%, and your max HP is increase by that amount.

Wow and with a deep wound they'd be at -45% health and receive only 80% healing... Doesn't work with what's in place already.

Steal Energy
10e | 3c | 35r:
This is easily interruptible in casting, and must apply at melee distance. For T seconds, target’s max Energy is decrease by 25%, and your max Energy is increase by that amount.

Hmm, now all you need is a few other skills and you've easily taken a monk out.

Steal Enchantment
15e | 3c | 35r:
This is easily interruptible in casting, and must apply at melee distance. For T seconds, you stripe target foe of an enchantment, and you gain the effect of that enchantment for the duration.

Steal Condition
5e | 1c | 20r:
This is easily interruptible in casting, and must apply at melee distance. You remove 1…3 conditions from target foe and apply to your self, with the same reminding duration. You gain X HP for each condition you stolen.
(good if you can time it right, and steal a condition with 1 or 2 second remind, and get heal from it)

I could have sworn that there's a skill just like this one... Anyway, all in all, it's easy to make your easily interruptable skills with what we already have, so I don't see these really being weak at all, they seem too powerful in most cases.

Nimble Finger
5e | 1c | 25r:
For next 5 seconds, you will not be interrupted on your next casting Steal skill.

Wow, if only I had read down one skill more I would have found out that steal skills are even easier to pull off.

Tight Strap Equipment
5e | 1c | 30r:
For next 30 seconds, your equipment are immune to be Steal skills.

Needle Purse
10e | 1c | 25r:
For next T seconds, whenever you use a Steal skill, it will also damage target foe for X damage. If any foe uses a steal skill against you, it will do Y damage back at them.

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Gambling

Coin Flip
5e | 1c | 20r:
You have 50% of doing X damage to target foe, but with 50% of doing Y damage to your self. Must be applying at melee distance.

The game is based on skill, not luck, but I do like this skill, I only wish I knew what X and Y were to make an accurate decision.

Seven Card Draw
10e | 2c | 5r:
You randomly apply one of 7 effects to the target foe. Bleed, Weakness, Cripple, Poison, Knockdown, Heal for X HP, and Gain Y energy.
Five Card Pick
15e | 2c | 15r:
You randomly apply one of 4 effects to the target ally. Heal for X HP, Increase 25% movement, gain Y energy, Cure 1 condition, or None.

Spiker’s Roulette
25e | 2c | 35r:
You will randomly do 5, 10, 20, 40, 80, or 160 damage to the target foe. This skill must be cast at melee’s distance, and can easily be interrupted.

I don't like the idea of doing random stuff because I don't see any skill involved with that whatsoever. It'd be way to inconsistant.

Healing Dice
15e | 3c | 30r:
You will heal a target ally for 20, 40, 60, 80, 100, or 120 health.

Dual Bones
15e | 2c | 20r:
Roll Twice. You will heal yourself /or damage target foe, for, 10, 20, 30, 40,50, 60 health/damage.


Intimidating Buff
5e | 2c | 10r:
Attack target foe with 140…200 damage. But 3 seconds later, target foe is heal back the same amount. This skill can not reduce target’ foe’s hp down to more than 25% of its Max.

Wow too powerful. Use Illusion of Pain or some other strong attack or series of attacks and you have a good rainbow spike... too good for my tastes.

Stone Face
5e | 1c | 20r:
For the next 4…8 seconds, all attack damage done to you will be shown as 0. After 4…8 seconds, the total damage received in previous time period is applied back to you. This skill can not use if your HP is less than 25% of your max.

Too short of a recharge. I like the idea of it, but it's just too easy with reversal of fortune and all prot skills in general.

Fortuna’s Smile
15e | 2c | 30r:
For the next T seconds, all spell cast against you have 10…30% chance to fail.

Lady’s Blessing
10e | 2c | 30r:
For the next T seconds, you have 10…50% chance of evading attacks.


Soldier’s Luck
10e | 2c | 45r:
For the next T seconds, you have 5…35% chance on your attack to do double attack (attack twice)

Lucky Star
10e | 1c | 30r:
On your next gambling skill, you will have increase 25% chance where it will do a “winning” (or effect that is in your favorite)

They already have a good chance that they will be losing, adding this just ensures that... And that's not any way of gambling. Gambling is where you have the lower chance of getting what you want, not a higher chance of getting what you want. If that was true, casinos in Las Vegas wouldn't exist... And I would know because I've been here for the past two weeks on vacation.

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Spycraft

Body Double
10e | 1c | 25r:
Create a Body Double that last for T seconds that will run and attack enemy, but doing no damage. The Body Double will look exactly like you, but only have 50…160 HP.

Sacrificing Double
10e | 1c | 20r:
Create a Immobile Body Double. All targets that were target at you would be redirect to the Double.

How much health would this double body have...?

Player’s Insight
5e | 1c | 10r:
Reveal all of target’s foes currently equipped skills to you. Must be cast at nearby distance range.

Mask Out
10e | 2c | 15r:
Hide the Icon of target foe’s skill bar (it can still be use, but you just won’t see the icon) for 4…8 seconds. Must be apply at nearby distance range.

Seems really useless...

Revealing Eyes
10e | 2c | 20r:
For 8…12 seconds, you are able to see enemy Stealth creature and Traps within visible area, and can target them with out time delay.

Trap Breaker
5e | 2c | 15r:
Disable all traps at nearby range. This still is easily interrupted when casting.

So in other words you can find traps and remove them making trappers useless... Overpowered in my eyes.

Ex-Communication
5e | 2c | 30r:
Block target foe from able to communicate with his/her teammates (by typing) for T seconds. Also reduce the effect of any healing or enchantment spell that target would receive from his/her teammates.

Too overpowering.

Dummy Item
10e | 3c | 30r:
Create a Dummy Item (flag, gear, chest, etc) on the ground. Any foe that come near it will receive X fire damage (like a trap). This skill is easily interrupted when casting.

So now these guys can create things that aren't traps? So you can detect ranger traps but not these because they aren't traps, pretty much replacing the whole idea of ranger traps...

Spy Glass
5e | 1c | 20r:
Increase the range of the radar for 20 seconds.

How much does this increase your radar by and still this seems extrodinarily overpowering in combination with everything you have...

Change Team
10e | 3c | 30r:
For T seconds, enemy foes have 33% of missing when attacking you. It also change your color on the Radar to your opponent team’s color.

Uncertain Terrain
15e | 2c | 30r:
For T seconds, black out target foe’s Radar screen, that they can see nothing, and also their Ctrl function. Target foe also have their attacking skills recharge time increase by T.

Might be acceptable if this was broken into 3 skills.

Smoke Screen
15e | 2c | 30r:
Create a Smoke Screen at your current location that last for T seconds. All creatures, ally or foe, within in the area of effect (distance of a ward), will have 50% to miss when attacking or using an attack skill, and 50% to evade attack or attack skills.

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WEAKNESS
Thief would actually be a very hard class to play. A lot of their skill need to be apply at close range, and can easily be interrupted; therefore, usually they need to depended on another teammate to take the hits, while they secretly do their thing. Stealth, if can pull off properly, would allow the first-attack advantage, and would be good to use in conjunction with Steal skills, Traps, or other long casting spells. However, getting to where you want with Stealth well be harder than you think (with 50% movement decrease and short amount of time, as well as the low armor). In many cases, you would need to depend on your allies, or your secondary, for support or damage.

You could still get up reasonably close to them and then become invincible with your stealth then cast your easily interruptable skill without worry as you'd lose stealth upon using it not casting it.

Design note: This actually would be about my Thief v2.5, as there were various previous draft about. Somehow just got the urge to revise it again. It think it should be unique enough to have a role of its own.

Reviews would be appreciated (your chance to get back at me... ), feel free to point out any possible balancing issue that need to be adress. Thanks for reading.

D&D:SOM Thief

http://www.misersoft.com/gca/gallery/sjgames/thief.gif

http://fursuit.timduru.org/dirlist/O...ot%20lucky.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...fd/Daggers.jpg


CC-LIST-STICKY
CC-LIST

Originally Posted by Kai Nui

Originally Posted by achilles ankle

very good effort put into the class but it seems this could only be a pvp character only. this could never be in PvE and would give a whole new meaning to solo builds. You could just sneak through an entire area up to the boss, use the skills that u still stay invisible and pretty much skip a part of the game. also runnin would be completely done for lol, just sneak past everything.

Originally Posted by unverified

The concept of the stealthy character is a staple of the fantasy genre and has been since the beginning... to claim that WoW created stealth is like trying to claim that they created warriors too... (now as far as the individual skills, I have no idea; I've never played any of the Warcraft games).

Admittedly, stealth would make things harder; after all, the monsters get whatever classes the pcs get, so stealth monsters would be as much of a headache as... wurms... which are already in the game; although most stealth monsters would be a lot easier to kill...

Stealth, misdirection, and espionage are part of the real world. Throwing a stick (pinging the enemy's radar) to distract the enemy so you can sneak by makes a whole lot more sense than running past them at full speed and relying on your hit points to keep you from dying.

I'm not saying this class is perfect; I personally don't care for the Gambling idea, don't think you should be able to interfere with enemy chat, and probably would have gone myself with the attributes of Stealth (hiding, and primary), Misdirection (confusing the enemy), Observation (detecting stealth and such), and Throwing Mastery (a weapon skill with small thrown weapons) - making it pretty much a pure non-spellcasting class.

And don't forget that any new class releases will have new skills released for the other classes, and any new ability is likely to have countermeasures among those new skills.

And as far as pvp goes, being able to confuse the enemy is not something to discount lightly. All other things being equal, the pvp team that works together the best is the one most likely to win. The point of a stealth class (done right) is not to create uber-effective invisible attackers, but to be able to either get in a good single shot (stealth nukers, stealth trappers) or to disrupt the enemy so that the rest of the team can do the job.

That said, there are a lot of people that just don't care about pvp at all, so even if it were "useless for pvp," it'd still wouldn't be useless (although it's a safe bet that a-net would ensure that the class was balanced for both pve and pvp).