Originally Posted by
Larynx
Yeah, extremely random and having an extreme impact on the fight.
You lock out the Staff Elementalist #5 ability. Okay, not a big deal. You lock out the Warrior shielld #4 (or even #5), suddenly a huge disadvantage and they might lose the fight because of RNG.
This is worse than any other problem I might have with RNG, be it Mesmer, Engineer, the current form of steal, what have you. The impact is huge, and it's all down to luck. A random condition, not really. Swiftness or Protection? Well, that might influence the fight. Locked out of one important ability? You'll probably lose if the other person is good.
This is the equivalent of getting 3 or 4 scorch crits on a non-shattered player as a fire mage. But even more likely. (3 scorch crits in a row is ~3%. Four is less than 1%. This would be 25%)
If you shorten it to any decent amount, it'll become useless because daze is far superior. If you keep it as is, it's incredible overpowered and down to luck. Both of which are bad.
As it is right now, steal's primary function is more or less it's secondary purpose. This is why the spell can't have any large degree of RNG to it.