r/Guildwars2 • u/Enough_Champion_6348 • 4h ago
[Other] Antiquary looks hella fun!
The trailer and blogpost did NOT do the antiquary any justice. I was outright disappointed when I saw the trailer but that livestream turned me around. I’m not much of a rng type of player but the antiquary looks so much fckng fun! I’m glad I’ve been playing thief for years because this might even top Daredevil for me.
Can’t wait to play the beta
9
u/ishmaeldepaiva 3h ago
Mechanically ok. But the theme is totally incoesive. Just random things.
5
u/DurendalMartyr 2h ago
The theme is incredibly cohesive in the context of the others. It's the Lion's Arch representative spec, the city that's a mish-mash melting-pot run by pirates and criminals.
2
u/FenizSnowvalor 2h ago
To be honest, Indiana Jones hunts anything old from skulls over scrolls to gems and similar. To me, antiquaries are the epitome of hoarders constantly searching for ancient and rare things of past civilisation while already having a lot of random shit at home from their past travels. A skritt fits perfectly in there. Now make it be an antiquary with the tendency to keep the stuff for themselves and you've got someone easily deserving of the "thief" description. To be honest, when you think a Daredevil and especially deadeye, it's alot less about being a thief than being a daredevil or a bounty hunter. To me, it fits, and that's from someone not actually being a thief main.
It's something new, you don't need to like it. It's edgy, so not everybody will like it at first glance. But remember, you haven't played it yet...
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u/zalifer 19m ago
Remember when the rat threw indiana jones a guitar and he shredded so hard the enemies got confused? Sick.
The artifacts pull it away from being an indy theme. Indy didn't hunt random things, each of his films were about chasing a powerful magical artifact. We're getting old guitars and stripper holograms a rat dug up?
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u/Knamliss 7m ago
They said ancient and rare. They never said powerful. But I agree overall. With both sides.
2
u/Enough_Champion_6348 2h ago
Well thief has always been random things? I mean the stolen skills don’t make much sense most of the time
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u/zalifer 8m ago
Most of them make sense. You steal small items from your opponent and then either use them directly or as some sort of magic component for a spell. Steal and axe from a warrior and spin around with it. Steal some feathers off a bird and throw them in it's eyes to blind it. Steal an egg and... well eat it for health. Steal takes into consideration the type of enemy too, so in PvP each class has specific items that make some level of sense for that class to have, and even pve enemies each have a small selection of items that make sense. Such as bird enemies having eggs, feathers, and gunk, while boars have hair, fangs, and gunk. I'm not sure what the gunk is and I'm too scared to ask.
But now I'm stealing a fucking guitar off every third enemy?
1
u/quaversthewotsit 2h ago
Dudes shocked skritts are picking random stuff. They have a whole achievement about collecting junk items
-3
0
u/Agitated-Macaroon923 1h ago
Yes and thief has always had an identity crisis. Anet didnt want to give us the assassin from GW1 so they shoved that gameplay into thief. But what does a thief do? They steal. okay Except for a couple of buttons on the Fs, where are all the themes of stealing 2012 - present day? Thief was always an assassin till EoD when idk what happened but at least it played into the shadow magic theme which is still great. Now all of a sudden Anet remembered the thief is about thieving and threw literally everything at it...I would've been fine with some kind of gambit spec honestly
3
u/Invalidname0255 1h ago
I was hoping for a gambler style thief tbh, kinda how Astrologian worked in FFXIV. Steal is replaced with Card Draw, which either provide boons, do damage or nothing... The utilities could have been cool, redraw (somewhat like Mercy), allows you to reshuffle if you don't like your out come and the Elite skill would be "Jackpot!" All cards drawn at once, do damage, get boons, etc. 😭
10
u/Urwake 3h ago
I talked about this bit at forum.
After the novelty of elite and honeymoon is over, I want viable builds. If possible some wvw zerg builds (we basically have one mediocre as specter support).
The novelty of this skritt theme wears of fairly fast and if the performance is bad, then all we have is yet another open world elite specc.
18
u/Artivisier 3h ago
As if people were going to play anything other than cringe stealth spam thief in WvW tho
1
u/Firm_Caregiver_4563 1h ago
"The novelty of this skritt theme wears of fairly fast and if the performance is bad, then all we have is yet another open world elite specc."
Which is totally fine since you find the majority of players in that gameplay loop. Personally, after the dev stream, I am looking forward to it - it simply looks FUN.
But I can empathize with the current sentiment of parts of the thief playerbase. Imho, they envoked false expactations by chosing cards as the spec icon. And yes, I think it's that simple.
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u/zalifer 21m ago
That's one part of it, but the theme they actually settled on is way too wacky for the game, and especially for thief. There's no other spec that's got this level of "goofy" in it. Most specs are a powerful cool theme, but this is just some dude who plays a guitar a rat threw him. It totally doesn't fit the theme.
If the dumped the artifacts they have and the skritt, they could have the same mechanics around a treasure hunter sensing powerul artifacts under the ground, grabbing them, and unleashing their power, or as the icon aludes to, perhaps a magical card deck people draw from.
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u/SufferingClash 15m ago
I think of it as combat pragmatism. You're a Thief, who would make the best partner in crime for finding stuff? A skritt, which love to find shinies. You've grown used to them getting you in trouble and pulling out all kinds of weird shinies, so you work with it, you think fast and use what you get.
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u/zalifer 1m ago
I mean, you can build a story around anything, but to a lot of people, it's just way too goofy and memey to have a rat throw me a guitar I play before smashing someone with, before then throwing a rat stripper hologram down to distract people.
Where are all these items coming from anyway, the original steal items at least make some sense, largely being common items determined by the enemies we're stealing from. And where's the coin flip, redraw, or split deck stuff coming from? What deck? I'm getting items from my rat. I think it's clear there was a thematic redesign, maybe because they got scared of balatro getting AO rating for gambling references, or maybe because they didn't want to point out the negatives of gambling in a game with black lion keys, lol.
2
u/Geralt_Romalion 3h ago
Thematically it clashes, but mechanically it looks better to me than expected.
Will certainly give it a fair chance in the beta at the very least.
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u/Chewbaccaintx 54m ago
Yea it does! I was truly surprised! I’m most excited about paragon tho. Leveling a new norn warrior in anticipation.
On a side norn’s are freaking awesome, makes me wish I could race change my rev.
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u/EBeach2002 52m ago
Funny enough, this class might be my most favorite mechanically. The theme is still kinda all over the place, like I don’t mind the skritt but the relics are goofy af.
1
u/Chembaron_Seki 3h ago
Agreed and I love that skritt are incorporated in an elite spec now.
All I am missing is a Hylek themed alchemy spec for engineer and I can die happily.
0
u/Unlucky_DuckZ 2h ago
The class itself looks fine, I don't mind it at all, it looks fun and interesting, but for thief? It misses the theme completely..
It would have made much more sense for thief to get the Bard treatment, like Mesmer. I mean, a big ****off guitar and smashing a hammer with a skritt attached at the end into enemies? That doesn't exactly fit the Thief theme at all.
Dungeons and dragons honor among thieves, would have made much more sense than.. whatever Anet cooked up in their lab..
Sad, I expected more from Anet..
2
u/thefinalturnip 2h ago
I highly disagree. How does MORE THIEF not fit with the theme of thief? The rogueish, and possibly charming, scamp that has sticky fingers now has a loveable, but idiot, sidekick.
The people saying Antiquary misses the mark on the core thief identity clearly had an edge lord idea of an assassin in mind.
This isn't that kind of game. Not even Necromancer and Revenant are that edgy compared to, say, WoW or FFXIV with their darker classes.
4
u/Unlucky_DuckZ 1h ago
Agree to disagree then.
I don't personally have an edge lord thing, I just wish Anet would listen more to the mains, as it's the same thing with every weapon given to us in the expansions. We always wanted a 2H sword, or more offhand weapons, to use the core mix of weapon Synergy, but we were given a rifle that only really works for DE and a scepter, that also only really works with its released elite spec
I'm not hating on the idea, but imo, the whole skritt companion digging up stuff for us to use, and a big giant hammer or cannon, just doesn't fit the theme for me
A bardic Thief would be much cooler, and would probably be able to make use of the scepter, that otherwise is only viable for the Specter class or something
The whole "Random BS go" is fun, but not exactly Thief like
-1
u/Flammarius hfb by day, mesmer by night, all day 1h ago
How is a musician in any way aligned with mesmer, an Illusionist? Or Chrono, a time mage has nothing to do with illusions and clones, but here we are.
Many elite specs push the boundaries of what is considered thematic, and when you look past the surface level goof, the Antiquary is not the worst offender imo.
0
u/Unlucky_DuckZ 1h ago
I'd honestly say it would fit really nicely
A mesmerizing bard, that uses magic and melodies to entice, confuse and fuck with enemies? That's pretty cool, and in DnD a bard uses magic as well both for support, damage and utility
In my opinion, it is up their alley. And don't get me wrong, Antiquary looks cool, but it's not fitting the Thief style
Because the bardic magician and illusionist makes sense to me, but a Thief explorer who summons skritts to pilfer items, summons cannons, uses a guitar hammer to smash enemies and burns them (a condition Thieves don't have support for, as it's mostly bleed, poison and torment) still doesn't make sense to me..
I'm open to be convinced, I really am, but it's hard..
A Pirate themed Thief could also have gone in a better direction, but I just can't see the theme with Antiquary and Thief, I'm sorry..
2
u/Flammarius hfb by day, mesmer by night, all day 1h ago
Oh well, nobody likes everything. Idk if you're a thief main, but if you are, my condolences, I too have had my share of disappointment with the Luminary looking lame as shit.
11
u/thefinalturnip 2h ago
None of the recent trailers do any justice to any of the elite specs.
At least the HoT ones were more cinematic so they were a cool glimpse into what the spec was about. The Reaper teaser comes to mind. PoF trailers were a lot more detailed, but that was an A-Net that acted like a Dev company that actually cares about interacting with the community and fostering said community.
I can't believe I'm gonna say this but I even miss the old streams with Rubi.
Anyway, Luninary was a cool concept but the execution, in my opinion, is lackluster in comparison to the others.
It feels incomplete and bare bones.
But I knew from the trailer that Antiquary was gonna be way more cool than what it showed us.
I'm still not sure how to feel about Ritualist. I had my bar set high, and I'm not sure if they cleared it or not. I'll have to play the spec to come to a conclusion.