Spears are confirmed 2h. After this xpac, thief will have gone 13 years with no new offhand.

[mirage.8046]

Dual wield skills? Anet be like 'we don't care to devote ourselves to making those skills.' It took them NINE years to make dual-wield skills with EoD. Endless Night was so sweet on release. 
All that axe does is copy both scepter and pistol with the condi damage, although axe is more for hitting crowds of enemies. I'll respect that axe does lots of juicy burst damage for both power and condi builds. Spear however is so powerful underwater esp if a DD or DE is using it. Imagine if it retains the block on land... 

[BobbyT.7192]

Watch the theif spear be a 2 hand healing support condi weapon, I can see Anet trolling thieves like that.

Edited June 7 by BobbyT.7192

[SoftPup.3048]

Melee condi weapon that doesn't require me to press @#*&!ing Death Blossom would be great. Give it poison and bleed and decent cleave.
Or make it staff 2 but without Weakning Charge's awful animation lock and input buffering.

[Shade.8971]

16 hours ago, SoftPup.3048 said:

Melee condi weapon that doesn't require me to press @#*&!ing Death Blossom would be great. Give it poison and bleed and decent cleave.
Or make it staff 2 but without Weakning Charge's awful animation lock and input buffering.

Thief is in the same boat as ele. Annoying or difficult just for the sake of being annoying or difficult.  There will most likely be a movement skill.

[draxynnic.3719]

10 hours ago, Shade.8971 said:

Thief is in the same boat as ele. Annoying or difficult just for the sake of being annoying or difficult.  There will most likely be a movement skill.

Almost guaranteed, the real question is whether it will also be the skill you want to spam for damage or not.

[Doggie.3184]

21 hours ago, Shade.8971 said:

Thief is in the same boat as ele. Annoying or difficult just for the sake of being annoying or difficult.  There will most likely be a movement skill.

Movement Skills are fine~ stuff like "Death's Retreat," "Disabling Shot" and "Vault" are good since the retreats are solely meant for retreating and not DPS, and we can control where Vault goes.

However;  uncontrolable movement skills on the main DPS skill that does the most damage and is intended to be spammed back-to-back is EXTREMELY ANNOYING. "Shadow Strike" and "Measured Shot" are such terrible feeling skill designs, making our main DPS skill hurl us backwards over and over. So is "Escape" on Speargun if you're a condition build and just wanna poison, contributing to Specter being the worst underwater spec in game. They could have designed Pistol 2 & Scepter 2 as retreat skills since they were both 100% useless in their initial design and still pretty pointless after changes: They could put Scepter 2's protection/might elsewhere like on "Wells." Wells suck anyways though cuz it's also forced movement on a utility type that's spammed back to back instead of being ranged+flip over to optional shadowstep.

"Leaping Death Blossom" isn't as bad since it goes towards enemies but is pointlessly annoying since it'd just simply be landslides better if you had WASD control while using it like the Warrior Axe Spin. Like why intentionally make it annoying instead of making it fun? Really odd... Fun = more people play Thief and buying gems for dagger skins. Just fix it... Most Thief players love daggers and likely rolled the class for them... the dual dagger set should be the most fun feeling thing in the game for us. 

"Heartseeker" can be annoying but I can live with it since it goes towards enemy, it's fast, and it doesn't have the downsides "Weakening Charge" has: Weakening Charge animation is too long for a movement lock skill but since it goes towards enemy it works as a main DPS skill with movement. The only problem is the animation desyncs against moving targets and, despite physically colliding with the target, doesn't hit it at all. Very buggy in PvP.

"Flanking Strike" is an anomaly: It goes towards the enemy and evades to make up for animation lock, but it's constantly wanting to rotate around the target with every use with terrible accuracy and then expects us to manually follow up with a non-movement skill each time. As a DPS spam ability the movement mechanics are frustrating. "Flanking Dive," however, with our underwater Spear, either moves you to their flank or doesn't move you at all if you're already at their flank with no pointless follow-up skills in between. No idea why Flanking Strike doesn't work the same way. Dive is just a way better mechanic. It'd be powerful if it existed and worked the same way on land.

"Pistol Whip" making us immobile for 20 hours each use is just very obvious of why that sucks.

People like having control over their video game characters. On other classes it's not a huge deal since they have cooldowns. But Thief was designed to use the same skill multiple times in a row so it makes the forced movement really annoying. If they add movement spam DPS skills to Spear hopefully it's not one of the awful feeling ones.

@Rubi Bayer.8493

[draxynnic.3719]

10 hours ago, Doggie.3184 said:

So is "Escape" on Speargun if you're a condition build and just wanna poison, contributing to Specter being the worst underwater spec in game.

I don't know, just off the top of my head, I think underwater Mechanist might have underwater Spectre beat for that title. I can usually get Spectre to work fairly well underwater by using hybrid gear like Viper's or Celestial, loading up on venoms, and setting up your build to be able to maximise your time in shroud.

[Zacchary.6183]

On 6/8/2024 at 10:33 PM, SoftPup.3048 said:

Give it poison and bleed and decent cleave.

Can we get something other than YET ANOTHER bleeding/poison weapon?

[draxynnic.3719]

4 hours ago, Zacchary.6183 said:

Can we get something other than YET ANOTHER bleeding/poison weapon?

Torment, then?

Thief is in a bit of a weird position where it has a lot of weapons that could be used for conditions, but there's no melee weapon which has a condition-based stealth attack. So if we're not getting an offhand, that's probably the biggest gap to be filled by an autoattack-capable weapon.

There is only one ranged weapon with a power-based stealth, but that is at least one, and it's designed to work with the elite specialisation that cares the most about stealth attacks.

[Doggie.3184]

Downside to if it was a condi weapon though is I dont wanna have to use venoms and thousand needle 'trap' unless they decide to make them fun suddenly. 😅

[ShadowInTheVoid.9183]

On 6/7/2024 at 11:44 PM, BobbyT.7192 said:

Watch the theif spear be a 2 hand healing support condi weapon, I can see Anet trolling thieves like that.

I legit think that would be the one thing that could salvage it for me. Lots of poison. Maybe something that gives constant barrier like Engi mace.

[Supernova Starr.2069]

You THINK you want a new offhand weapon, that until they come out with a willbender offhand sword variant for thiefs, then you wish you didn't

Edited June 11 by Supernova Starr.2069

[Genesis.8572]

4 hours ago, Doggie.3184 said:

Downside to if it was a condi weapon though is I dont wanna have to use venoms and thousand needle 'trap' unless they decide to make them fun suddenly. 😅

Weirdly now thinking of Oberyn Martell the Viper using a spear as a thief with spear. 

[reddie.5861]

On 6/5/2024 at 2:54 PM, draxynnic.3719 said:

A condi-only melee weapon might work well. All of the existing melee weapons have power- or CC-based stealth attacks, so there's space for a melee condition-oriented stealth attack for deadeye.

Lack of a new offhand on the one profession where an offhand would actually be a big deal is a bit tiring, though.

no condi.
i hate condi, condi options enough on thief. i dont understand why 1 likes to play condi.
every human enjoys fat big numbers and here we have one i like to see my target bleed to dead slowly weeee the joy >.<

anet needs to put thief back to its full glory like it was at start of gw2. mobile like no other and hits like a truck in a short burst.
nowadays everyone is mobile and hits like a truck where thief is doing a little to no dmg at all anymore.

[kash.9213]

On 6/10/2024 at 10:59 AM, Doggie.3184 said:

Movement Skills are fine~ stuff like "Death's Retreat," "Disabling Shot" and "Vault" are good since the retreats are solely meant for retreating and not DPS, and we can control where Vault goes.

However;  uncontrolable movement skills on the main DPS skill that does the most damage and is intended to be spammed back-to-back is EXTREMELY ANNOYING. "Shadow Strike" and "Measured Shot" are such terrible feeling skill designs, making our main DPS skill hurl us backwards over and over. So is "Escape" on Speargun if you're a condition build and just wanna poison, contributing to Specter being the worst underwater spec in game. They could have designed Pistol 2 & Scepter 2 as retreat skills since they were both 100% useless in their initial design and still pretty pointless after changes: They could put Scepter 2's protection/might elsewhere like on "Wells." Wells suck anyways though cuz it's also forced movement on a utility type that's spammed back to back instead of being ranged+flip over to optional shadowstep.

"Leaping Death Blossom" isn't as bad since it goes towards enemies but is pointlessly annoying since it'd just simply be landslides better if you had WASD control while using it like the Warrior Axe Spin. Like why intentionally make it annoying instead of making it fun? Really odd... Fun = more people play Thief and buying gems for dagger skins. Just fix it... Most Thief players love daggers and likely rolled the class for them... the dual dagger set should be the most fun feeling thing in the game for us. 

"Heartseeker" can be annoying but I can live with it since it goes towards enemy, it's fast, and it doesn't have the downsides "Weakening Charge" has: Weakening Charge animation is too long for a movement lock skill but since it goes towards enemy it works as a main DPS skill with movement. The only problem is the animation desyncs against moving targets and, despite physically colliding with the target, doesn't hit it at all. Very buggy in PvP.

"Flanking Strike" is an anomaly: It goes towards the enemy and evades to make up for animation lock, but it's constantly wanting to rotate around the target with every use with terrible accuracy and then expects us to manually follow up with a non-movement skill each time. As a DPS spam ability the movement mechanics are frustrating. "Flanking Dive," however, with our underwater Spear, either moves you to their flank or doesn't move you at all if you're already at their flank with no pointless follow-up skills in between. No idea why Flanking Strike doesn't work the same way. Dive is just a way better mechanic. It'd be powerful if it existed and worked the same way on land.

"Pistol Whip" making us immobile for 20 hours each use is just very obvious of why that sucks.

People like having control over their video game characters. On other classes it's not a huge deal since they have cooldowns. But Thief was designed to use the same skill multiple times in a row so it makes the forced movement really annoying. If they add movement spam DPS skills to Spear hopefully it's not one of the awful feeling ones.

@Rubi Bayer.8493

Good point about Flanking Dive. A lot of the movement skills, especially the ones you listed, have to be used with the target de-selected or you have to toggle into Action Camera to have better control over their behavior or land them where you need. I play almost entirely with no target in Default Cam and I spend a lot of time in Action Cam when I need to have a target selected because pathing and map objects in this game are there to murder thieves or lock them up.

If I don't want to die with Flanking Strike in WvW like on walls or cliffs, I use it in Action cam and a lot of the time I have to Jump+Flanking Strike to get some air time at like start to mid animation so I don't get caught up on a wall lip or whatever. I have to do the same with Death Blossom if there are any cliffs or weird objects around and all of those skills need personal fenagling in places like Stone Mist Castle where pathing might be the number one thief killer. 

Edited June 12 by kash.9213

[draxynnic.3719]

Hrrrmn. Seems it's hybrid melee, but which direction it leans seems like it might depend on how you use the 2- and 3- skills. So we might have that melee condi sneak attack (which looks to be a spear flurry) as long as you use the right chain beforehand, but it might also be perfectly functional with a power. Will be interesting to see when more details arrive.