Azure's Spell of the Day 8-23-05

[Nobleman Azure]

Day two of domination week! We take a look of one domination spell that generates so many questions and so many disappointed looks caused by underestimation. Today's spell is...

Arcane Thievery

10en cost
1sec cast
10sec rec

Spell. For 5-37 seconds, one random spell is disabled for target foe and Arcane Thievery is replaced by that spell.



Yes, if you dont have the rank for the spell that you stole, you will use the spell at rank 0 power.

Many people become disappointed after hearing this fact, but it's main purpose is not to be able to use a spell against an opponent but actually to disable one spell from the opponent for a long time.

Even if you were not able to use the nabbed spell, it is still an advantage to your side because the opponent cannot use this spell you just took; if you were to steal a spell has a rank that you invested on, then that is just an added bonus.

Notice its recharge being 10 seconds. Its recharge is actually a minimum of 10 seconds because if you have domination rank high, arcane thievery will remain being the spell you stole until the duration ends. With this in mind I like using this spell best when my domination rank warrants it a 15 second more or less duration, therefore i can keep nabbing random spells off opponents skill bars.


Rankings:
PVE: 8/10 (Monsters have a very small skill bar, robbing on is like half-blackouting them)
CAPVP: 7/10 (You can take a W/Mo's healing hands or rob the KD warrior's aftershock)
TAPVP: 7/10
HOH: 5/10

[Patccmoi]

Day two of domination week! We take a look of one domination spell that generates so many questions and so many disappointed looks caused by underestimation. Today's spell is...

Arcane Thievery

10en cost
1sec cast
10sec rec

Spell. For 5-37 seconds, one random spell is disabled for target foe and Arcane Thievery is replaced by that spell.



Yes, if you dont have the rank for the spell that you stole, you will use the spell at rank 0 power.

Many people become disappointed after hearing this fact, but it's main purpose is not to be able to use a spell against an opponent but actually to disable one spell from the opponent for a long time.

Even if you were not able to use the nabbed spell, it is still an advantage to your side because the opponent cannot use this spell you just took; if you were to steal a spell has a rank that you invested on, then that is just an added bonus.

Notice its recharge being 10 seconds. Its recharge is actually a minimum of 10 seconds because if you have domination rank high, arcane thievery will remain being the spell you stole until the duration ends. With this in mind I like using this spell best when my domination rank warrants it a 15 second more or less duration, therefore i can keep nabbing random spells off opponents skill bars.


Rankings:
PVE: 8/10 (Monsters have a very small skill bar, robbing on is like half-blackouting them)
CAPVP: 7/10 (You can take a W/Mo's healing hands or rob the KD warrior's aftershock)
TAPVP: 7/10
HOH: 5/10

I have a build about this (that i wrote in here somewhere) using Me/Mo and Arcane Echo Thievery. It works VERY VERY well, i got points in healing, domination and inspiration and i use Arcane Echo thievery to steal both mesmers or monks (or W/Mo if none are available!). I can then use their skill very efficiently while they can't do so anymore. I screwed some builds totally using this and got some great weapons myself.

I find personally that using this on monks is quite awesome (if you got points in healing, you're not actually wasting your 2 slots by useless spells, you got things you can use!) because if you manage to steal healing touch, orison, heal other, etc their whole build is suddenly screwed and either they or their allies become easy kills. Also very good on Mesmers since you get some spells you can use fully while disabling.

Very great combo too with diversion. If you manage to use it on a spell and you stole 2, that guy is pretty much out.

I think you underrated it, used well and picking your targets carefully so you can use the skills, this is quite awesome in my experience.

Not mentioning one of the most fun thing to do!

[Pyro Gl]

hey that was my idea! :p :D

I made a build for fun around this spell with echo and arcane echo on arcane thievery, diversion, and a couple of heals. Who's the healer now? :P

It actually worked quite well, and was very funny. It was not that great when they had no monks though, once even no casters. But it was very funny when there were. Definitely a fun build.

[Patccmoi]

hey that was my idea! :p :D

I made a build for fun around this spell with echo and arcane echo on arcane thievery, diversion, and a couple of heals. Who's the healer now? :P

It actually worked quite well, and was very funny. It was not that great when they had no monks though, once even no casters. But it was very funny when there were. Definitely a fun build.

Using echo is overkill imo. Too many chances that you'll get the same skill twice which makes your skill wasted mostly (unless you steal something like 2 x Energy Drain) and you're not versatile enough. Not mentioning you lose your elite spot which could certainly find a better use (for example you could Signet of Midnight to get rid of them warriors, or Energy Drain to do some energy control). Personally with 2 x Thievery and some Diversion i found it more than efficient enough as shutdown and it left me with enough skills to do something even when i didn't have much good to steal.

[jibikao]

I've always thought this skill is interesting.

So you steal one "spell" from the target foe. That means the target foe loses that spell for the whole duration right? It's not a Hex or Nature's Renewal can't help it right?

Awesome.

If you Echo this skill, can you steal 2 different skills from the same target?

[Dammerung]

This is a pretty fun skill to play around with in PvE
Usually I bring Arcane Echo along when I plan to use Arcane Thievery, although there's a chance that you will steal the same spell it also gives you two chances to steal two spells.
Ever experience on of those time when a monk boss just won't go down, but your team isn't dying either? Well with this you will "eventually" steal his orison of healing :D
This spell also works well against mesmers, since they will have spells that you might actually have attribute in for you to use.

In a sense I use Arcane Thievery with Arcane Echo somewhat like Diversion. One you will disable something but won't know what it is for a shorter time. The other you might end up missing altogether, but it has shorter recharge and if you are sucessful you get to disable that spell for a longer time.

[Ahastar Darktalon]

Skill sets of a pro are often that tightly packed together in combos that the complete shutdown of a single skill can completely disable a foe in PVP.

Of course...you do need a bit of luck with it. :)

[Patccmoi]

I've always thought this skill is interesting.

So you steal one "spell" from the target foe. That means the target foe loses that spell for the whole duration right? It's not a Hex or Nature's Renewal can't help it right?

Awesome.

If you Echo this skill, can you steal 2 different skills from the same target?

Ya, with Arcane Echo you can steal 2 (but there is a chance you'll get the same twice, so if you steal a W/El twice, you're pretty sure to have 2 Aftershocks!)

The spell is really stolen, there is no way for them to gain it back which is the main strength of skills like this, Diversion, Distracting Shot, etc. It's not a hex, it's not a condition, it's just gone. The advantage of Arcane Thievery over all the others is that it's instant and there's absolutely no counter to it, the disadvantage being that it's random, which isn't too bad overall, if you use Arcane Echo really most builds are screwed if you take out 2 spells out of it. Take a traditional TA Monk, he'll have Hex Breaker and Rez Signet as spells and sometimes Blessed Signet or another one similar (Divine, etc). That leaves them with 5-6 spells total, if you take out 2 of them you basically took out 1/3rd of their healing options, some being much more crucial than others (steal Healing Touch and Orison and most monks can't even self-heal anymore). Some builds also rely on one very crucial spell and if you remove it they're done, for example once i stole Divine Boon and Reversal from a Zealot's Fire El/Mo... poor guy was staring with empty eyes at us for the whole fight trying to find a way to trigger his Fire...

It is a very underrated and underused skill imo, by using it more and more i found it extremely efficient. If you base your full build on it and steal blindly (spells that you can't use, etc) you might find it bad. But if you steal wisely (choose your 2nd prof in function of what you plan to steal so you can have points there and use the skills, for example i'm Me/Mo when i steal so that i put points in healing and use what spells i can steal from monks efficiently) you're still up with a 8 useful skills bar and your opponent has 6. With Diversion this can be lowered even more.

I really suggest those who never used this skill to do so, especially with Arcane Echo (because i think that 1 skill lost is annoying, but 2 skills lost is actually bad and can really screw up a strategy). If you can't do it efficiently, you should at least have fun, it's the easiest shutdown skill to use, altough it's not easy to use it efficiently and reliably.

[daftman]

Hmm, well I was thinking of a build like this
Arcane Thievery
Arcane echo
Signet of Humility
Arcane Conudrum
Power Block
...

With any luck you can totally disable him.

[Saikyo]

Fun times with this skill, though sometimes it's very awkward.

The denial of the enemy skill is great and the chance of stealing important skills from certain builds (Frag + Virulance...) is an added bonus. If you can get something to use it's even better.

I really don't have much else to say about it but I'll share some fun stories:

Once the other team had no primary monks or mesmers, so I targeted the R/Me in an attempt to get a mesmer skill (one time I got fragilty which was great because it screwed over his incindiary arrows build). So I cast arcane echo, then arcane theivery and I got...

arcane echo... well darn it... I'll try again... another arcane echo...

Another time I ran into an energy drain mesmer in the arenas, I ran up to him quickly and stole his energy tap, but he managed to Energy Drain me before I could get the second one off and then quickly energy drained me while his teammate killed me. When I got resed I targeted him again and this time got his Energy Drain and his Ether Feast. So then I used Energy Drain (his), Energy Drain (mine), Ether Feast (his), Ether Feast (mine). Now he was on the recieving end of his own build!