Guild Wars 2

if chill would affect them, they would be hilariously easy to defeat

chill as in, making iniative regen lower, thats what u meant right?

warrior doesnt loose his adrenaline either when getting interrupted either

ik how u feel, it can be annoying, but changing something like that could be a possibly huge nerf

During beta, they actually WERE affected by chill. It was a slaughterhouse. They couldn’t fight anything that had any amount of chill. This was reverted for a reason.

Same applies to the initiative, too.

Initiative isn’t an advantage, its just different. It lets thieves make quick decisions but at the same time if they drain their initiative and don’t succeed at w/e they were attempting, it bites them back hard. A lot of weapon kits have a heavy reliance on the defensive weapon skills which is keeping them alive. Nerf that and you get a face tank sheet of glass which is just awful to think of.

Other classes can cycle 1-5, swap a weapon and 1-5 again if they wish. Thief can 1-4 and be drained, swap, still drained. Its a system unique to them because of how the class behaves. All the coeficients, the condition/control durations are lower than most skills because of this.

Tl:DR

No, initiative is fine as is. Thief needs some reworks but not initiative.

NinjaEd.3946:

Initiative isn’t an advantage, its just different. It lets thieves make quick decisions but at the same time if they drain their initiative and don’t succeed at w/e they were attempting, it bites them back hard. A lot of weapon kits have a heavy reliance on the defensive weapon skills which is keeping them alive. Nerf that and you get a face tank sheet of glass which is just awful to think of.

Other classes can cycle 1-5, swap a weapon and 1-5 again if they wish. Thief can 1-4 and be drained, swap, still drained. Its a system unique to them because of how the class behaves. All the coeficients, the condition/control durations are lower than most skills because of this.

Tl:DR

No, initiative is fine as is. Thief needs some reworks but not initiative.

When you interrupt a thief that was about to use a skill, that skill should have a 3-4 second cool down just like other profession. The reason why thieves are so OP at evades and escape is because they can SPAM any skill they want.

For example:
Lets say that a thief was about to use cloak and dagger to stealth, if you interrupt him, he can IMMEDIATELY use it again.

I think the reason why thieves are so over powered at evades and stealth is because they have CONSTANT access to them regardless of interrupts.

The thing I do not like about thieves is that they can SPAM any skill they please. This makes them annoying to fight, and more annoying is that they have huge DPS and condition damage.

Summary:
If you interrupt a thief’s skill, that skill should have a 3-4 second cool-down just like any other profession who was about to use the skill. The thief will still have access to utility skills and weapon swapping skills.

Auesis.7301:

During beta, they actually WERE affected by chill. It was a slaughterhouse. They couldn’t fight anything that had any amount of chill. This was reverted for a reason.

Same applies to the initiative, too.

I see no problem now that thieves can remove 2 conditions every 3 seconds while on stealth. Maybe it is time to reintroduce it.

Initiative is very much a problem for the Thief class. It has been since day one. Everyone and their mother bemoans about how often a Thief can evade or how easy it is for them to gain stealth. The root problem is initiative and how quickly it regenerates.

That said, you can’t just make wild changes to the system without also acknowledging that the Thief is barely hanging on as it is. People aren’t using the builds they are now because they’re overpowered… they’re using them because they’re the only things that work.

Adjusting the class in a way that will have any impact on their evade spam or stealth uptime will need to be compensated for. But until they start making these changes, the real problems the class has will never be addressed.

In my opinion, all of the traits that improve initiative regen should be removed and Chill in particular should reduce initiative regen by 66%. What you replace them with I have no idea. I’d start with something that removes chill on dodge though or reduces the effectiveness of chill by 50%.

Hitman.5829:

Auesis.7301:

During beta, they actually WERE affected by chill. It was a slaughterhouse. They couldn’t fight anything that had any amount of chill. This was reverted for a reason.

Same applies to the initiative, too.

I see no problem now that thieves can remove 2 conditions every 3 seconds while on stealth. Maybe it is time to reintroduce it.

It’s actually 1 condition at the start, and 1 for every 3 seconds they remain in stealth. That’s our only good condition removal btw, which is tried to SA which is stuck with last refuge, the trait that kills the thief themselves.

Try using hard crowd control that’s stronger than a daze maybe? Immobilizes, cripples, stuns, knockdowns, and knockbacks area thief’s worst nightmare. With very limited stun breakers, making sure you pack some immobilizes or stuns will help you fight thieves, provided you know how to land them. Like others said in this thread already, the spammable nature of thief weapon skills is not overpowered, it’s just different. In reality it’s a global weapon cooldown system. If a thief bashes his head on heartseeker 4 or 5 times and then switches weapons, he can’t do anything, so it’s not like there isn’t risk tied to the initiative system.

Anyways, @OP, it might help if you posted what class you play so maybe we could help you learn to deal with thieves a bit better? I’m sure myself and other thief players would be more than willing to help you!

Initiative works fine.

It’s already good balanced, and nerfs are not necessary.

The OP seems to know nothing about thieves, because…

1) Thieves must have enough Ini before they ckittene his skills.
Everyone who play one, know this.

2) The ini-system give them more freedoms to choose which weaponskill(!) they want to use, but they have cooldowns (on weaponsskills) like every other class, it works just a bit different.

They ckittene up to 5 times the same weaponskill in a row, but not more.
Other classes ckittene 4 skills in a row, then switch their weapon and use 4 other skills in a row.
Every thiefweapon use the same Initiativepool, so it’s impossible for them to do the same and over a longer timescale, they ckittene less weaponskills, then every other class in this game.

PS: How do you think, would a normal cd system help, while it would destroy the whole class and his task in PvE?
PPS: Not every thief want to play with stealth and stealthless thieves are much more affected, than this one with stealth.

You havent stopped to think how this would affect the Thief, it would solve the problem? how many classes have access to chill and interrupts? how would this affect the gameplay of the thief? how could the thief counter this? would remain the thief still playable?. And there are much more questions that a balance team has to respond and your topic doesnt adress.

Your topic is driven by ignorance and personal taste.

Kiba.9701:

You havent stopped to think how this would affect the Thief, it would solve the problem? how many classes have access to chill and interrupts? how would this affect the gameplay of the thief? how could the thief counter this? would remain the thief still playable?. And there are much more questions that a balance team has to respond and your topic doesnt adress.

Your topic is driven by ignorance and personal taste.

The thief can remove conditions upon entering stealth and more conditions every 3 seconds. Chill can easily be removed because thief can enter stealth every 3 seconds. I see no problem with making thief drain initiative if he gets chilled, it would be more of an annoyance to the thief than a problem. Just like chill is an annoyance to any other class whose skills are affected by this condition.

Hitman, you only viewed 40% of our availiable skills, and you didnt think thoroughly.

Interrupts do make our skills on cooldown, if interrupted. This applies to slots 6, 7, 8, 9, 0.
Chill also slows down any cooldowns on slot 6, 7, 8, 9, 0, and F1.

So you want chill to affect initiative regeneration and interrupts make initiative-based skills go on cooldown? Alright, here´s the offer: make initiative not shared between weapon sets.
Also, a thief cannot easily cleanse conditions on any build. Even Shadow´s Embrace removes just one condition every three seconds, and what guarantees you remove the chill first? Right, nothing. In its current state, chill would be way more than an annyoance, if it affected a thief´s resource. The offset for having initiative is the shared initiative pool between all weapon sets.

It needs to be removed altogether. Dunno what genius came up with the idea, but putting a class without cooldowns in a game where everyone else is limited or gated almost exclusively by cooldowns is just plain dumb.

It’s not only almost impossible to balance (cough Black Powder Heartseeker abuse cough) but also creates insanely dull gameplay (that *swooosh*swooosh*swooosh*swoosh* when a Thief starts chasing spamming HS makes me want to facepalm everytime).

To be perfectly honest, the entire profession probably needs a complete rework, that very concept of stealthing and backstabbing is horribly outdated for a game that wants to offer decent PvP.

if anything the game could make much more use of resource management and it would be easily balancable even the way it is now when ArenaNet would just take a thorough single thought at their balance. Thieves spamming a single skill could easily be punished by making skill spamming become more expensive per skill use in a specific time frame, say, like two seconds. First HS in that timeframe costs 3 ini, but second HS in that timeframe costs 4 and restarts that two second timer. third HS costs 5 and so on. When the timer has run out, cost is reduced back to normal. Simple fix.

A thief playing D/P will need to spend 9 Initiative for a single stealth combo. 7 if traited for initiative gain on entering stealth. Yes it is annyoing, but its outplayable by using interrupts during the Heartseeker. You can smash the thief inside his blind field by standing at it, not in it. and all D/P thieves go for a Backstab when they stealthed successfully, so you exactly know where they want to be and can take action accordingly.
Then you have the cheap D/P thieves of course, which use Shadow´s Rejuvenation. But in all honesty, with all those PU Mesmers, Condi Perplexity Necroes, Engis and Eles, Hambow or Axe/Shield GS Warriors, Condi Regen Rangers out there why shouldnt thieves be allowed to play cheap as well?

This comes from an avid S/D thief, and i hate D/P thieves because of their S/D-eating nature.

Hitman.5829:

Kiba.9701:

You havent stopped to think how this would affect the Thief, it would solve the problem? how many classes have access to chill and interrupts? how would this affect the gameplay of the thief? how could the thief counter this? would remain the thief still playable?. And there are much more questions that a balance team has to respond and your topic doesnt adress.

Your topic is driven by ignorance and personal taste.

The thief can remove conditions upon entering stealth and more conditions every 3 seconds. Chill can easily be removed because thief can enter stealth every 3 seconds. I see no problem with making thief drain initiative if he gets chilled, it would be more of an annoyance to the thief than a problem. Just like chill is an annoyance to any other class whose skills are affected by this condition.

1. Chill is not the only condition in the game. Also it is no prioritized when removed, damaging conditions are.

2. Not everyone is running shadow’s embrace. In fact a lot of people have moved away from Shadow arts so please elaborate on our other methods of rapid condition removal?

3. “I see no problem with making thief drain initiative if he gets chilled, it would be more of an annoyance to the thief than a problem.” no it would destroy the thief. We can’t enter stealth freely without d/p which is back to #2, not everyone runs d/p. Also its 9 initiative right there, so chill would down right remove their defenses.

4. Our skills are affected by chill. Our evades/leaps are shortened in distance, F1 and 6-0 are all affected by the cooldown recharge, and when we swap weapon we don’t have a 2nd resource pool. When we swap weapons at 2 initiative, we still have 2 initiative. Instead of individual skill cooldown we have a global cooldown which often plays as our offense and defense.

So please, just stop with this kitten. There is no debate with allowing chill to affect initiative. Interrupts should affect it but that’s more than likely a bug issue because some skills do spend the cost when you interrupt it and some don’t. Unless you know more about thief than the youtube videos don’t suggest such radical nerfs.

In my opinion, all of the traits that improve initiative regen should be removed and Chill in particular should reduce initiative regen by 66%. What you replace them with I have no idea. I’d start with something that removes chill on dodge though or reduces the effectiveness of chill by 50%.[/quote]

Ele’s have a similar trait (that no one takes); but Its a good idea. Since chill affects attunements and gives ele’s an exceptionally hard time (arguably chill affects this proff the most , yet they are still in the meta), there’s no reason it shoudn’t affect initiative imo

dylan.5409:

In my opinion, all of the traits that improve initiative regen should be removed and Chill in particular should reduce initiative regen by 66%. What you replace them with I have no idea. I’d start with something that removes chill on dodge though or reduces the effectiveness of chill by 50%.

Ele’s have a similar trait (that no one takes); but Its a good idea. Since chill affects attunements and gives ele’s an exceptionally hard time (arguably chill affects this proff the most , yet they are still in the meta), there’s no reason it shoudn’t affect initiative imo

[/quote]
All classes have traits to improve their mechanic so initiative regen traits will never be removed. If I follow your logic chill should affect adreline and lifeforce too but everyone should wait until thief update.

dylan.5409:

Ele’s have a similar trait (that no one takes); but Its a good idea. Since chill affects attunements and gives ele’s an exceptionally hard time (arguably chill affects this proff the most , yet they are still in the meta), there’s no reason it shoudn’t affect initiative imo

thief has a “remove cripple and weakness on dodge” trait. really useful for liadri, really crappy for anything else.

but to be honest, chill is a condition the class is relatively well prepared to handle. the problem is that our cleanses are very specific, so we can’t use generic cleanses like most other classes.

Hitman.5829:

NinjaEd.3946:

Initiative isn’t an advantage, its just different. It lets thieves make quick decisions but at the same time if they drain their initiative and don’t succeed at w/e they were attempting, it bites them back hard. A lot of weapon kits have a heavy reliance on the defensive weapon skills which is keeping them alive. Nerf that and you get a face tank sheet of glass which is just awful to think of.

Other classes can cycle 1-5, swap a weapon and 1-5 again if they wish. Thief can 1-4 and be drained, swap, still drained. Its a system unique to them because of how the class behaves. All the coeficients, the condition/control durations are lower than most skills because of this.

Tl:DR

No, initiative is fine as is. Thief needs some reworks but not initiative.

When you interrupt a thief that was about to use a skill, that skill should have a 3-4 second cool down just like other profession. The reason why thieves are so OP at evades and escape is because they can SPAM any skill they want.

For example:
Lets say that a thief was about to use cloak and dagger to stealth, if you interrupt him, he can IMMEDIATELY use it again.

I think the reason why thieves are so over powered at evades and stealth is because they have CONSTANT access to them regardless of interrupts.

The thing I do not like about thieves is that they can SPAM any skill they please. This makes them annoying to fight, and more annoying is that they have huge DPS and condition damage.

Summary:
If you interrupt a thief’s skill, that skill should have a 3-4 second cool-down just like any other profession who was about to use the skill. The thief will still have access to utility skills and weapon swapping skills.

When you interrupt a thief skill, yes their is no cd applied, but, and this is incredibly important, the thief loses the init used to cast the skill. Take a d/p thief for instance. I personally only whip out d/p to fight d/p thieves on occasion. When I see the other thief plop a bp down, I immediately headshot them, interrupting their HS. They’re now down 9 init w/o a stealth allowing a time frame to severely kitten them up. Same goes for CnD. If it misses or gets interrupted, the thief is still down 6init out of a total of 12init. Now the chance that they have another 6 init available immediately int he middle of a fight is doubtful. They are now beyond vulnerable while they wait for just a few more init to use CnD gain, only to have it possibly miss again.
Tl:dr
The act of losing init from an interrupt is in itself a “cooldown.”Remember that thieves only have 12init (15 traited).

@Sagat, I see you’re point, but as the saying goes— nothing is more unfair than equally applied conditions to unequal circumstances—
Thief is still the only proff largely unaffected (outside teleport range) by chill, a very important defensive condition.
@Bruno. As another poster mentioned there was a buff to stealth and condition removal, so maybe its time to revisit the mechanic?

dylan.5409:

@Sagat, I see you’re point, but as the saying goes— nothing is more unfair than equally applied conditions to unequal circumstances—
Thief is still the only proff largely unaffected (outside teleport range) by chill, a very important defensive condition.
@Bruno. As another poster mentioned there was a buff to stealth and condition removal, so maybe its time to revisit the mechanic?

Thief isn’t the only class that is relatively unaffected by chill. Warriors can trait for removal of CC conditions (Dogged Step), and the warhorn 4 removes CC conditions as well (if traited it actually turns a condition into a boon too). I’ve found on my necro I have a pretty easy time dealing with conditions too, though certainly not as easy on my warrior. I think the only way you could honestly justify initiative being impacted harder by chill would be if you buffed the thief’s overall condition removal. Against tanky condition builds thieves already struggle, whether chilled or not. If chilled somehow slowed initiative regen or reduced the initiative pool, thieves would have close to 0% chance of outplaying condi builds in this game right now… that doesn’t like fun to me… it sounds like more hard counters, which is something this game does not need.

What most people don’t realize is that thieves are the only non-heavy class that MUST get into melee range in order to do any serious damage. This is the reason why movement impairing effects hurt us so much; unlike all the other non-heavy classes we have to get up close and at the same time we don’t have any protection, blocks, invuls, for our low hp pool and medium armor.

It also doesn’t make sense for chill to affect initiative because initiative is a global resource pool. A class who uses a skill while chilled will only have that skill affected by the cd increase, whereas a thief would have all his skills using initiative increased.

dylan.5409:

@Sagat, I see you’re point, but as the saying goes— nothing is more unfair than equally applied conditions to unequal circumstances—
Thief is still the only proff largely unaffected (outside teleport range) by chill, a very important defensive condition.
@Bruno. As another poster mentioned there was a buff to stealth and condition removal, so maybe its time to revisit the mechanic?

i’ve mentioned on many threads before, but i think chill should affect initiative regen. sure, it would potentially obliterate a thief with his utilities on cooldown, but so what? chill already obliterates eles on cooldown, and they can trait to remove the kitten thing with a dodge.

it shouldn’t degenerate like some person suggested, that’s outright overkill (would be like chill forcing skills on cooldown even if you didn’t use them), but the base ini-regen should slow down.

and there wasn’t really a buff to stealth and condi removal, as much as we were given a single option to remove conditions, which is a shadow arts trait. unless you are on a stealth-centric build that can stealth easily, you’re not gonna take that trait. even if you are on a build with access to stealth, most of them would rather spend those points somewhere else, because forcing every thief to take a trait so they can stand a chance is bad design.

it’s a very touchy topic, but i’d rather have the devs address it.

Shinjo.6092:

What most people don’t realize is that thieves are the only non-heavy class that MUST get into melee range in order to do any serious damage. This is the reason why movement impairing effects hurt us so much; unlike all the other non-heavy classes we have to get up close and at the same time we don’t have any protection, blocks, invuls, for our low hp pool and medium armor.

It also doesn’t make sense for chill to affect initiative because initiative is a global resource pool. A class who uses a skill while chilled will only have that skill affected by the cd increase, whereas a thief would have all his skills using initiative increased.

I don’t think that is the problem. Thieves can blind spam and get up close and fight any profession. They have also access to range weapons and stealth.

The problem with thief is that chill does not affect them, it might affect the utility skills just like any other profession, but when it comes to weapon skill they are immune to it. Nobody should have immunity to conditions.

Chill MUST have an effect on the thief weapon skills. What should that effect be? We will leave that to Anet developers.

Personally, I think chill should either:

• Decrees initiative regeneration (keep in mind that chill lasts for a brief time, usually 2-3 seconds, or 5+ if you are spammed by it.) So the thief initiative regeneration will be affected for a short time.

• Chill should last longer in thieves to compensate for the immunity. In other words, a longer cool down on their utility skills.

Add more opinions; what should chill affect on a thief?

Asking for core mechanic changes to a profession requires changes across the board to the profession.

These are not tweaks. The changes requested in the OP have a significant impact in viability vs engi, ele, and necro, in regard to chill. Additionally, locking a thief out of a weapon skill for 5 Seconds on interrupt has such a significant impact on a fight that it’ll mean a loss in the form of giving up of positioning or being down. The interrupt change would be especially devastating in conquest structured pvp. S/D Skill 3 being on cool down because of a larcenous interrupt means you have to give up positioning and or stealth. D/P black powder, shadow shot, or heart seeker being interrupted has more leeway, but can be equally devastating.

Other balance changes are coming, likely in September. The thief’s core mechanics, don’t need to be adjusted. It creates a playstyle that is different and one that numerous people enjoy.

If you feel a particular match-ups are unfair, then address that, not how the entire profession plays.

and in lieu of your said balance,

since we have a shared/ global cooldown in our “Initiative pool”

i would like to have our weapon swaps not to have a cooldown,

Hitman.5829:

• Chill should last longer in thieves to compensate for the immunity. In other words, a longer cool down on their utility skills.

ROFL
Where is my iwin button? QQ

Hitman.5829:

Shinjo.6092:

What most people don’t realize is that thieves are the only non-heavy class that MUST get into melee range in order to do any serious damage. This is the reason why movement impairing effects hurt us so much; unlike all the other non-heavy classes we have to get up close and at the same time we don’t have any protection, blocks, invuls, for our low hp pool and medium armor.

It also doesn’t make sense for chill to affect initiative because initiative is a global resource pool. A class who uses a skill while chilled will only have that skill affected by the cd increase, whereas a thief would have all his skills using initiative increased.

I don’t think that is the problem. Thieves can blind spam and get up close and fight any profession. They have also access to range weapons and stealth.

The problem with thief is that chill does not affect them, it might affect the utility skills just like any other profession, but when it comes to weapon skill they are immune to it. Nobody should have immunity to conditions.

Chill MUST have an effect on the thief weapon skills. What should that effect be? We will leave that to Anet developers.

Personally, I think chill should either:

• Decrees initiative regeneration (keep in mind that chill lasts for a brief time, usually 2-3 seconds, or 5+ if you are spammed by it.) So the thief initiative regeneration will be affected for a short time.

• Chill should last longer in thieves to compensate for the immunity. In other words, a longer cool down on their utility skills.

Add more opinions; what should chill affect on a thief?

If you decrease initiative regen then you’re basically harming the thief for doing nothing. Chill only effects cooldowns of skills used on other classes so why are you going to basically put all of the thiefs skills on cooldown even if he does nothing? That isn’t “fair” by any stretch of the word. Here is the scenario. A thief vs a necro in a fight, a thief uses up his initiative and then gets chilled. Now he isn’t using any skills, just auto-attack, his initiative is still “chilled” though and his initiative regen is lowered by 66%, Assuming a 3s chill in those 3 seconds the thief will regen only 1 initiative, That means it now takes 5 seconds for a 3 initiative skill that wasn’t even used during chill. In order to keep this new application of chill fair you will need to have ANY application of chill increase cooldowns of skills used or not, thus removing any skill it takes to recognize you’re chilled and not using a skill during it.

The real solution is simple and should easily be possible since the mechanics are kind of already in the game. Have chill reduce attack speed by 50% instead of 66% on cooldowns. It would be a direct counter to quickness, of course quickness would need to be buffed to be as prevalent as chill and of course the negative side effects on those skills removed. Even if we reduce it to +/- 25% attack speed for haste and chill to reduce burst/bunkering effectiveness it would still be great.

A Thief doing nothing has full initiative and isn’t using it. Chill has no effect on their initiative regen then, right? Chill affecting refen is the most suitable solution to this ‘problem’.

As long as initiative isnt shared between weaponsets anymore you can sure make chill affecting our initiative. But as long as we have a unified cooldown resource shared between ALL weaponsets chill would have too much impact on a thief. And as already stated, F1, 6,7,8,9,0 still slow down their cooldown, a thief also moves at 33% speed when being chilled, just like any other profession.
You could also make chill affect Warrior´s Adrenalin for example. Make it gain Adrenalin at 50% reduced rate. Or make Mesmers only be able to summon half a clone/illusion everytime they summon a clone/illusion. How about sharing chill between a Ranger and his pet?

The idea of Distaste is the best. Change chill from cooldown affection to attack speed affection, tweak some numbers to get the balance right and there you go, chill then affects a thief the same as every other profession.

Atherakhia.4086:

A Thief doing nothing has full initiative and isn’t using it. Chill has no effect on their initiative regen then, right? Chill affecting refen is the most suitable solution to this ‘problem’.

A thief doing nothing can have anywhere from 0-12(15 traited) initiative. Thieves will often burst using up all their initiative, if they are then chilled right after the burst they are effectively punished by chill when activating no skills.

If this were the case for other classes it would be like chill adding adding the 66% cooldown increase to all skills already on cooldown when chill is applied. So even if you don’t use a skill you’re still getting punished.

Distaste.4801:

Atherakhia.4086:

A Thief doing nothing has full initiative and isn’t using it. Chill has no effect on their initiative regen then, right? Chill affecting refen is the most suitable solution to this ‘problem’.

A thief doing nothing can have anywhere from 0-12(15 traited) initiative. Thieves will often burst using up all their initiative, if they are then chilled right after the burst they are effectively punished by chill when activating no skills.

If this were the case for other classes it would be like chill adding adding the 66% cooldown increase to all skills already on cooldown when chill is applied. So even if you don’t use a skill you’re still getting punished.

I’d still argue this scenario isn’t even and still favors the thief. Thief still has numerous traits and utilities that provide bonus initiative outside of the passive regen.

Regardless of class, you will respond to being chilled. The affect of initiative regen being slowed would be far less noticeable than a skill cooldown.

And it’s still the most reasonable solution to this ‘problem’. Simply ignoring it isn’t tenable.

Buts its tenable to ignore that chill would have a much worse effect on a thief´s intiative than on any other profession´s weapon cooldowns?
Those traits you mentioned – hte traits for bonis initiative – they equal the various weaponskill cooldown reduction traits of the other professions.

You obviously have no idea about how initiative works, Atherakhia. When a thief uses a weapon skill, it consumes initiative. That is equal to a global cooldown! Keeping bonus initiative out of the equation, one time using CnD equals a six second cooldown on all other weapon skills. Just because a thief has a pool of initiative where he can store in and drain from its not like all skills indeed are unusable. Additionally, all weapon skills are balanced around the fact that they dont have a cooldown. Interrupted skills drain initiative just as other skills go on cooldown when interrupted. And swapping weapons doesnt mean that there is a fresh set of cooldowns to choose from since initiative is shared between all weapon sets.

TL;DR: Shared initiative pool between all weapon sets and NO affection of chill, or individual pools of initiative but affected by chill. And trust me, you won´t want the latter.

I’ve become increasingly convinced throughout the lifespan of this thread’s existence that less and less players of this game understand how initiative works.

The problem with the thief is not with initiative. I’ve seen many bad thieves that just spam some skill (sb evade, heartseeker, s/d #3, etc). The moment you interupt them once, or daze them or really anything they’re down a lot of their initiative and easily killed. The problem with thief is more with the stealth mechanic: there is little downside to poor play. If a player is in stealth and attacks a person and it is blocked, the player remains in stealth. Having an attack blocked should instantly drop stealth to force the player to use his/her stealth wisely, whether its a thief, or mesmer, or engi, etc..

Initiative is really fine as it is…

I have a Thief…

I think the problem is you’re working from the assumption that initiative regen is fine as is right now and chill is a needless change.

I’m working from the other side… initiative is overpowered and the Thief needs reasonable changes to it. Chill affecting the horrendously overpowered initiative regen that’s already in the game seems like a reasonable change.

Now all that said, if you refer back to my original post… adjustments to initiative regen will likely need to be compensated for elsewhere. I’m absolutely fine with the Thief getting buffs once initiative regen overall is fixed.

Handin.4032:

The problem with the thief is not with initiative. I’ve seen many bad thieves that just spam some skill (sb evade, heartseeker, s/d #3, etc). The moment you interupt them once, or daze them or really anything they’re down a lot of their initiative and easily killed. The problem with thief is more with the stealth mechanic: there is little downside to poor play. If a player is in stealth and attacks a person and it is blocked, the player remains in stealth. Having an attack blocked should instantly drop stealth to force the player to use his/her stealth wisely, whether its a thief, or mesmer, or engi, etc..

Initiative is really fine as it is…

But look at it another way…

What is causing stealth to be overpowered?

Is it the leap finisher on smoke fields? Or is it the insane initiative regen that allows it to happen with limited real risk over CnD?

When all is said and done, stealth uptime needs to be nerfed. It’s simply too easily abused. I would argue that it’s initiative regen that’s allowing it to be abused because it removes much of the risk involved for using things like BP+HS(+HS+HS) over CnD.

Nerf stealth and initiative together,

But i propose that thieves should have no cooldown on weapon swap, to compensate

So now initiative is overpowered? it is just a managable resource system, it is not overpowered – the weapon skills are balanced around initiative.#3 spam on S/D doesnt do much,looks stupid and is predictable because 66% of the time that thief is not evading. #2 spam is only really dangerous when you are below the threshold of 25%, and when a thief does it through smoke you dont get damaged but instead can react and stand next to his smoke field in order to make him reveal himself.

it still stands – since we have a global fixed pool of 12 (15) initiative across ALL weapon sets at land and submerged, there is absolutely no need for a change.

Wahhhhh please don’t change my profession.

Oldgrimm.8521:

Nerf stealth and initiative together,

But i propose that thieves should have no cooldown on weapon swap, to compensate

spoke like someone that doesn’t play thief. there’s rarely a reason for a thief to swap weapons back and forth within 10 seconds.

Distaste.4801:

Thieves will often burst using up all their initiative, if they are then chilled right after the burst they are effectively punished by chill when activating no skills.

so just like every other class, if you use your cooldowns and get chilled, you’re kittened. chill affects ongoing cooldowns as well as skills that were used after the chill effect. if a thief uses all his ini and then gets chilled and loses access to ini regen, how is it any different from a ranger that used all his skills and got chilled, making the recharges incredibly slow?

this thread has two sides, apparently: people that play thieves alone and have a hard time understanding how the rest of the game works, and people who don’t play thieves and have absolutely no clue how initiative and thief combat work.

How about chill reduces intiative regen to what it was before the Dec. 10, 2013 patch? I think this would be fair since thieves played fine like that for over a year.

BrunoBRS.5178:

Oldgrimm.8521:

Nerf stealth and initiative together,

But i propose that thieves should have no cooldown on weapon swap, to compensate

spoke like someone that doesn’t play thief. there’s rarely a reason for a thief to swap weapons back and forth within 10 seconds.

all i see is an endless option of combo(s), not having a weapon swap cooldown,

eg. s/d + sb = infil. strike + cnd + swap to shortbow surprise shot + swap to s/d infil. return, (for team immobilize support. rinse and repeat) and a lot more possibilities

(Ps. i love my thieves aloooottttt, and one more norn to level up for my satisfaction)

So if you interrupt a thief skill do they lose the initiative or not? I’ve seen both answers in this thread now.

If yes, I’d say things are ok with initiative. If no, well it needs to be the other way. Interrupting and immobilizing, i.e., controlling the thief should be the way to beat one. If they are immune to interrupts and can just respam their crap, that sucks.

My understanding was that they lose the initiative. Is this true?

The thief loses initiative when you interrupt them. The initiative is spent before the skill activates and interrupting them mid-skill will work. The only skills that can’t be interrupted are skills like Headshot. Daze cures that problem tho.

MSFone.3026:

So if you interrupt a thief skill do they lose the initiative or not? I’ve seen both answers in this thread now.

If yes, I’d say things are ok with initiative. If no, well it needs to be the other way. Interrupting and immobilizing, i.e., controlling the thief should be the way to beat one. If they are immune to interrupts and can just respam their crap, that sucks.

My understanding was that they lose the initiative. Is this true?

Yes it’s true.
They lose/waste their initiative if you interupt them, because Thieves need enough Initiative before they can use his skills.

Everyone who had played the thief for at least one minute know this.

This is one of the the main different, between Ini and normal CD’s.
Thieves don’t get it back his initiative, if their skills are interrupted, while the other 7 profesions get a short cd of 3 sec and can use again after this.
[In the time between the activation and the first effect (Dmg, block,etc.)]
PS: Don’t listen to the crying guys, the most dont know what they talking about.

MSFone.3026:

So if you interrupt a thief skill do they lose the initiative or not? I’ve seen both answers in this thread now.

If yes, I’d say things are ok with initiative. If no, well it needs to be the other way. Interrupting and immobilizing, i.e., controlling the thief should be the way to beat one. If they are immune to interrupts and can just respam their crap, that sucks.

My understanding was that they lose the initiative. Is this true?

Yes it’s true.
They lose/waste their initiative if you interupt them, because Thieves need enough Initiative before they can use his skills.

Everyone who had played the thief for at least one minute know this.

This is one of the the main different, between Ini and normal CD’s.
Thieves don’t get it back his initiative, if their skills are interrupted, while the other 7 profesions get a short cd of 3 sec and can use again after this.
[In the time between the activation and the first effect (Dmg, block,etc.)]

PS: Don’t listen to the crying guys, the most dont know what they talking about.

Clownmug.8357:

How about chill reduces intiative regen to what it was before the Dec. 10, 2013 patch? I think this would be fair since thieves played fine like that for over a year.

We also had stronger traits to aid in our regen, which were nerfed when our base initiative regeneration rate was increased.

Even the slightest reduction in regen is a big nerf for thief and a big buff for chill. Not all builds have a high supply of initiative, the few “t-word” SA builds with d/p in wvw have no place in this discussion because many people are aware its kitten (even thieves themselves). All this does is pigeohold people to invest more into their initiative from fear that chill will shut them down.

People need to understand that just about every weapon kit thief has available to them atm, has built in defenses that are essential to staying alive. S/X is up front, they need something to help with the AoE spam so they have evasion and a 2 step condition removal with 1 set having stealth access and the other having a blind field. Then you got D/X which its AA helps them dodge more, cnd(6) for stealth or BPS+HS (9 ini) for stealth. SB has a (now crappy) evasion and teleport if they’re warded or immobilized. P/p just sucks unfortunately, but even it has bps for its defense.

Bottom line, you can’t spam the skills without opening yourself up to attack. It’s a global resource with essential defensive skills, it’s already weaker than cooldowns it just has the advantage of allowing quick thinking. Only suggestion worth taking is allowing interrupts to work on all weapon skills because a few of them (PW for example) don’t spend the initiative until the pistol is swung. The majority of them do however, and that 3 or 4 initiative loss effects every weapon skill, not just the one you interrupted.

I’m still in favour of the following (seen suggested several times before), to discourage repeated casting of individual skills but that wouldn’t stop Thieves from carrying out any regular combos:

- keep initiative regen (and interaction with chill) the same as at present
- give skills a short ’cooldown’ (possibly different lengths for different skills, but I’d guess at around 3s each?)
- this ’cooldown’ does not disable skills like regular cooldowns
- instead, if the skill is used again while under the effect of this ’cooldown’, it has an increased initiative cost (probably just 1 for any skill)
- this increased cost may stack if skills are spammed repeatedly; I guess it’d need tested to see - even increasing the cost by 1 has a significant effect on how regularly a skill can be used

Hitman.5829:

I don’t think that is the problem. Thieves can blind spam and get up close and fight any profession. They have also access to range weapons and stealth.

1. Not all Thieves blind spam so please do not lump that into ALL of us. Can we? Sure but stop trying to hurt the whole profession in trying to stop the few from spamming. You can easily remove the blind and yourself from that situation by not standing in the blinding area…but most don’t. They choose to fight the thief of the thief’s terms and that’s where the L2P issue comes in.

2. Mesmers have access to so much steath with their PU builds it puts most thieves to shame and they have far better ranged weapons than our bows/pistols. Are you going to go cry about them and have them nerfed down into nothing? (sorry Mesmers, but you are the other stealthy profession to compare to and I have no issues with the PU builds) We already now will have a 6 sec reveal that will end up killing most of us from the engi/ranger.

Stop complaining about the mechanic, it works fine and chill affects our movement speeds (which is vital, a slow thief is a dead thief) and our utilities like all other professions. Our initiative system works off a system of give and take, those hard hitting annoying blind/stealth on hit takes up a lot of resources and most of us can only afford to give those 1 or 2 tries and then we are out.

It sounds like to me, the OP has never really tried the profession and should make a new character to understand the bad that comes with the squishy melee.