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[Skills] Thief Pickpocket

KrunknMunky

Legacy Supporter 3
Joined
May 4, 2011
Location
SCOTLAND!!!!!!!:D
As I'm sure many thiefs know, Pickpocket is a very frustrating, and pretty much pointless skill at the moment. It has a very low chance of successfully pickpocketing, and a 20 second cooldown. The skills has a chance also to be completely quiet, and not announce whether it proc'd or not. The purpose of this thread is to discuss possible ways to improve it, and make it into the fun skill it once was.

I remember on the test map I chose thief simply to have fun with my friends. On the test map, Pickpocket was nowhere near perfect. It was completely spammable, as it did not use any mana, or start a cooldown, unless you successfully Pickpocketed someone. However, it still had a very low chance of working, which was very frustrating. I remember standing by my friend spamming my Pickpocket key for nearly 2 minutes before giving up, and stealing from my other friend within the first 20 tries.

That was not an effective way for a skill to work, as you could never read in chat while attempting to pickpocket, as your screen would be filled with "You failed to steal anything from <playername>", however even that was better as it is currently. Whenever I am with my friends I will constantly try to steal from them, just for the lolz, and to test the skill a little. It proc's so infrequently, that I celebrate every time it does, simply because it feels like a mammoth achievement.

One thing I do like about the skill is the mana cost, I personally think it is perfectly balanced to use 20%, as it is not a pvp skill, I would only really use it in a situation where I am not worried about mana.

I have spoken with other Thiefs, and Kainzo once or twice on how to improve it, and I have come up with a couple suggestions.
  • Give it a much higher chance to proc, but keep everything else the same, perhaps even up the cooldown
  • Slightly increase the chance to proc, but reduce the cooldown significantly, or add in a second cooldown, ie: One short cooldown after a failed attempt (2-5s), and a full cooldown after a successful pickpocket (20s as it is currently)
  • Something I discussed with Kain was if it was possible to make pickpocket work in NO-PVP. I definitely think this is a good idea, but am unsure whether when the skill is used in NO-PVP, there should be some backlash (ie being open to damage for x seconds, or the pickpocketed player has a chance to get his stuff back)
These are my suggestions so far, but please input more if you can!
 

Dazureus

Legacy Supporter 4
Joined
Jan 14, 2011
Location
Texas
These are some great ideas. Especially the No-PvP zone thing. It would be fun to have it work in protected areas, and to open the Thief to damage. The effect of being vulnerable would balance that well, in my opinion. I would like to see that done for as long as their cooldown lasted, preferably in tandem with the successful and unsuccessful cooldowns so that people who notice could prevent the theft before it happens. I think this would give people a fair shot at attacking the Thief so that they can't complain when the timer is up and the Thief is suddenly invincible.

Besides that, what if Pickpocket has a much higher chance for being silent if it's unsuccessful than if it is successful? That would make sense to me as well as kind of encouraging it's use. Don't want it to be unappealing after all.
 

Kainzo

The Disposable Hero
Staff member
Founder
Adventure Team
Joined
Jan 7, 2011
Location
The 7th Circle of Heaven
We're redoing Stealing in general for Thieves. Right now we have a plugin that is completely different but its not related to a "Skill" with cooldowns or mana.

We're working on it
 

Devoshade

Legacy Supporter 7
Joined
Jun 25, 2011
Location
Afghanistan FOB Sharana
Long as they cant touch LWCs im good i was worried cause i remember awhile back that was something someone in off topic chat asked about that and an ability for them to break something in a personal region which is retarded as hell.
 

LordSeven

Legacy Supporter 7
Joined
Feb 13, 2012
I like the idea of Thieves being able to steal items in PVP free areas and by doing so become briefly vulnerable to attack (20-30S), regardless of the outcome of the theft attempt.
 
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