Arcane Thievery Question

Arcane Thievery - "For X Seconds, one random spell is disabled for target foe, and Arcane Thievery is replaced by that spell."

I'm sure this is old news, but why is it that when you echo or arcane echo this skill and use it twice on the same foe, it merely takes away the same skill twice every time? It doesn't seem very random to me.

Last time I checked (a couple weeks ago), it worked fine - that is, it usually got a different spell, but sometimes it would steal the same one again.

Note that if the enemy you're targeting only has one spell (the rest are "skills") you'll only be able to steal that one spell, and therefore in that case Arcane Thievery will indeed steal the same thing repeatedly. This can also be used to your advantage - for example, the Priest only has Heal Area so you can use this to disable it and then kill him with nearly anything.

Your question might be better directed to the Scrolls of Insight forum.

Arcane Thievery is obviously bugged, I should not steal the same spell 3 times in a row.

Don't tell me that a monk only brings the only healing spell "Healing Seed" into battle? I've seen that monk used other spells, but when I arcane echo, echo and arcane thievery that monk, all 3 spells I 'stolen' are healing seed.

ANET, please fix this.
Thank you.

I'm starting to think it's not entirely random. I was doing the Ring of Fire mission and my brother could only steal aura of faith from the monk boss. He tried probably more than ten times, and all of them yielded aura of faith.

what if... all 8 people used arcane thievery on this one unlucky guy.... would he get this uber blackout?

that would be awesome. im definetly doing this some day

I run a skill denial mesmer (Power Block, Arcane Echo'd AT, Diversion, & more) and i do notice that more often than not, Arcane Thievery steals the same skill.

The way I see it,
Arcane Thievery is broken.

You should not steal a 'stolen' spell, i.e: a spell that is already disabled by Arcane Thievery.

One time I used it on someone and then about 10 seconds later he used it again.

Is 30+ second blackout for Domination 12 and above really that accurate of an estimation? I'm pretty sure he didn't get a moral boost, as we were in random areana.

I know the problem with your query, though. It's likely that the spell you keep stealing is the only one that the target has on him. Arcane Thievery only steals spells. If you steal from an R/E who only has one spell, Confure Flame, you're only going to get Conjure Flame.

Now, if you kept getting Healing Seed, then that theorie is unlikely. Perhaps it tends to stick to the first randomized skill. I think I had that problem once before when I was stealing from a W/mo - I got Healing Breeze twice - but then after a third try I got his Life Bond XD

Also worth pointing out that most games use the built in (and horrendously bad) random number generator. I wouldn't be surprised if the 'bug' in this case is it really generating the same result three times. Although, if that's the case, don't expect them to fix it.

I just tryed it. It works fine. "The bug" that you see is probably a lack of spells on the target enemy.

Reading this I have just remembered a question I always had on my mind when echoing Arcane Thievery... When Echo/Arcane Echo expires and turns back into itself.. is the skill still disabled for the enemy??? At 16 domination the duration is 39 seconds (if i remember right) so that's heaps longer than the 20 sec duration on echos...

I always wondered if a team of 8 X/Me with Echo and Theivery could just take out any team (disable 2 monks and then spike everybody else) I could also really mess up IWAY teams by taking out the Necros. I came up with the idea completely on my own earlier today (too bad it isn't that original. Dang these forums. I thought I was a genius). Too bad that it doesn't seem to work/is slightly bugged.
Anyway, yeah, it only steals spells. I was trying in in PvE (just for fun to play around with some character classes' I don't play as skills) and tried to use in on some Minotaurs and kept getting the message, this character has no spells to steal (in the red text similar to a view of target is blocked message).

Thievery on steals SPELLS. Not skills, skills are different than SPELLS. Clearly, if you use it on a W/Mo, you are only going to steal Healing Hands. If you "thief" the same person who only carries one SPELL, you will steal the same spell multiple times. It isn't bugged, you are just trying to steal spells from someone who is only carrying one spell.

Actually, when you do that the Echo/Arcane Echo'ed versions last the full duration of Arcane Thievery (they don't revert after the normal 20 seconds).

Well if the description reads true to actual game mechanics you should only have a 12.5% chance of getting the same spell that you had already stolen.

Other than that, there's the VERY remote possibility that the monk arcane echoed his healing seed and you stole that, or that was the only "Spell" in his bar, the others being skills, signets, or other abilities...

Which brings up another question. If you had stolen a spell that was arcane echoed, and that character's arcane echo duration runs out, what happens to said echoed-stolen spell?

Also, what happens if the character that you ArcaneThievery'ed experiences a morale boost, lands a successful Oath Shot, or is under the effect of a Serpent's Quickness or Quickening Zephyr? Since the countdown for the thievery duration reflects that of a normal skill recharge, is it affected by those recharge-influencing conditions?

What if a character had cast the Arcane Echo enchantment, and had gotten it stolen before he had casted his next spell, will the resulting arcane echoed spell be disabled? How will the recharge be influenced by the fact that the original arcane echo was disabled?


-edit reply to Mysterial's post-

See I always assumed things would be simple but the code isn't always that concise, or at least I imagine so. But what about when the rules of one spell conflict with the rules of another? Simple example, how Arcane Thievery's mechanics supercede that of Arcane Echo's mechanics, according to someone's post above me, if you use an arcane echoed thievery, you get the full thievery duration, and it doesn't revert back to a recharging, expired arcane echo after only 20 seconds.

You're reading too much into it. Functionally, it's really very simple:

-Choose a random spell the target has
-For x seconds, that spell is disabled for the target
-For x seconds, Arcane Thievery becomes that spell

That's all. If they had already cast Arcane Echo and you steal it, Arcane Echo will still work perfectly fine and become a recharged copy of whatever they cast next, and you still have the skill for the whole duration. Same with all the other effects that alter recharges or temporarily replace skills.