Spell Thief

An interesting concept of copying a spell twice for a total of 3 times makes this build a good spell thief.

Mesmer/(any secondary; I'd prefer something low-profile w/mesmer)

Attributes:
Domination: 16
Inspiration: 15

Skills:
1.) Arcane Echo
2.) Echo {E}
3.) Arcane Thievery
4.) Signet of Humility
5.) Energy Tap
6.) Drain Enchantment
7.) Ether Feast
8.) Rez Sig

Use Arcane Echo and then Echo {E} and then cast Arcane Thievery 3 times on your target to steal 3 random skills, then Sig of Humility to render half their skillbar useless. Drain any enchantments and steal their energy is basically it after they are missing their other half of the skillbar. Be sure to cast Drain Enchantment fast after you steal their skills, like Boon for example.

I've tried this build before, triple-casting arcane thievery

The one problem was that you have a 1/8 chance minimum of disabling any spell every time you cast arcane thievery, regardless if it is already disabled - so it's entirely possible to have three copies of the same spell if you're that unlucky. Therefore it's not entirely true that you can disable half of your targets skill list. It would be more effective to scroll through warriors and rangers to disable any magic spells they may have (if they don't have spells, thievery wont work). At most they will carry one healing spell so you can take it away and they'll fall easier.

It's also not that energy efficient. thieveryx3 + echo + arcane echo = 50 energy.

In it's best usage, argane thievery can disable an elite spell.. that's good i suppose. You might want to consider your second class as being the class you would steal your spells from... but again its not energy efficient.

It's always nice to steal a spell here and there^^ and then shout out a spell that you're casting that's outside your profession.

Arcane thievery with echo & arcane echo is like a combination of 1/2 shutdown and 1/2 diversion time.

Shutdown builds I favour more than e-denial. Why drain them from casting energy consuming spells when you can just shut down the lot in one go^^

I think once Factions comes out I'm going to try some Arcane Thevery/Larceny with SoH and Diversion and Blackout and whatnot nastiness. But yea, stealing spells is loads of fun.

I know E-Denail. I luv playing it, but I thought it would be fun to steal some spells from monks and stuff. Plus, you steal some from Mesmers or Monk/Mesmers and you may get an Energy Surge {E}?

It's fun to do, but you can't win much doing it. A guildie and I (2 Mesmers) ran this in TA...think we only won a single battle, but we were laughing the entire time.

For the sake of efficiency I'd just spam Diversion using a fast cast mesmer in between castings.

The dumb thing about Thevery is its NOT random (tends to steal the same spell over and over during a match) and if you Echo it, the Echoed Thevery is likely to steal that same spell. Reminds me I wanted to post a thread about this in the suggestions forum. They should fix this, so that you can use Thevery more effectively. Esp. since they put a double in for it in Factions... I mean why bother with the double if it's going to steal the same skill as the original (happens more often than not).

can thievery steal an elite?

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