Guild Wars 2

I main an interrupt mesmer. It’s awesome. With the announcement of the upcoming grandmaster traits, I squeed so much when I saw that it was tailored to my exact build! It’s great that ANet is finally getting around to buffing the more active specs, so mesmers aren’t so pigeonholed into running PU condi, the build which is copping a lot of hate.

I was excited as I was reading the description for the new trait, until I got to: “This will not affect skills that have no recharge”. Wot. Besides auto-attack, there’s only one other set of skills, nay, one class that isn’t subject to cooldowns on their weapon skills. Thieves. I have a major issue with this. This trait will require mesmers to drop either Chaotic Interruption, the, crux of most interrupt builds out today or Deceptive Evasion, the bread and butter trait for every PvP build that uses clones in some way (read: every build).

So, we’ve established that an awesome trait requires losing something else, and it’s understandable. The problem I have is when a single class can completely ignore that grandmaster trait because they play that class. There is no counter play to it. Not like there is for condition specs fighting a Diamond Skin Ele. If you’re running the new trait and you come across a thief, interrupting his weapon skills will not hinder him in the slightest. “But Renny.6571, if you interrupt a thief’s weapon skills, he loses the initiative, which is basically a cooldown!” Wrong. Another member of the PvP community recently made a thread containing a video highlighting that most interruptable thief skills are not subject to initiative loss when they’re interrupted. In this same thread, he modestly chose to disregard discussion about thieves not being subject to the cooldown increase component of the Chill condition. Which is another topic itself that completely astounds me that it has been in the game for over a year without so much as an acknowledgement.

“So Renny.6571, what are you suggesting? ANet completely nerf the hell out of thieves and make them unplayable?!” Again, wrong. Stop making asinine comments random voice! In a perfect world, I’d love for ANet to remove initiative and rework thief skills to be balanced around regular cooldowns, but we know this will never happen. So my next suggestion would be to subject the interrupted weapon skill to a 10 second cooldown, the same as every other class, but not remove the initiative cost of the skill. My reasoning is this: the new grandmaster trait boils down to ‘you interrupt the skill, it goes on a 10 second cooldown, regardless of your class’. And in a way, it makes total sense. If thieves lost the initiative of the skill, it’s essentially a cooldown for all of their weapon skills, this is wrong. However, subjecting the skill to the regular 5-10sec cooldown from being interrupted? It solves the aforementioned problem and also stops thieves from using that same skill immediately after the CC expires, which amazingly keeps in line with every other class in the game!

I know I’m jumping the gun about a month early on this post, and I’ll look like a complete idiot if ANet decide to reveal information regarding this exact subject in one of their upcoming livestreams/blog posts, however I still feel that this issue needs to be more widely recognised. So, what do you guys think about interrupting/chilling a thief? Or the initiative system in general? And please, try to keep this on topic and flaming to a minimum!

logged in to voice my support as a thief main, because i think it’s silly that thieves get a free pass on a lot of stuff because of initiative. now i think initiative is a really interesting mechanic that allows thief skills to have a very different approach than everyone else in the game. however, to think that a shutdown mesmer (ironically, the bane of my assassin in GW1, since it would cut all my skills and energy regen while dealing DoT) can’t do anything to a thief beyond a quick scare is silly.

thieves do need to face the consequences of being interrupted and chilled just like everyone else. maybe the chill shouldn’t slow ini regen down 66%, but that’s a discussion for another thread. the point here is that it is quite honestly unfair that being skillfully countered means nothing to the thief. so i’m here, voicing my support that the skill should, yes, be shut down when interrupted, with the ini cost being unaffected. the simple solution is make it so initiative is only deducted from the skill after the cast is over.

The cost of being interrupted on GC thieves is pretty much insta-death. I’m pretty sure that’s about as punishing as it gets.

One could argue that losing half your resources for no gain would also be considered a pretty mean trade-off. Dunno about you, but losing 6 init and then also going on a 10 second cooldown on a skill which requires constant use just seems silly OP.

That’s not to say I don’t agree or disagree, but I think a flat 10 seconds is crazy. Would make a lot more sense to have the timer increase by like 3 seconds flat for all skills to keep it potent but not blatantly overpowered, especially since a good lockdown mesmer really doesn’t have much of a counter except for thieves as it stands.

This at least keeps them in a not-so-hot position, but doesn’t totally destroy them. Telling a D/D thief he can’t use CnD for 10 seconds is literally game-breaking and might as well just give mesmers a skill that just kills the target if it’s a thief. The same goes for S/P, D/P (although I hate D/P builds even as a thief and think they’re totally broken and deserve more nerfs), S/D, P/P, and so on.

DeceiverX.8361:

1. The cost of being interrupted on GC thieves is pretty much insta-death. I’m pretty sure that’s about as punishing as it gets.

2. One could argue that losing half your resources for no gain would also be considered a pretty mean trade-off. Dunno about you, but losing 6 init and then also going on a 10 second cooldown on a skill which requires constant use just seems silly OP.

3. That’s not to say I don’t agree or disagree, but I think a flat 10 seconds is crazy. Would make a lot more sense to have the timer increase by like 3 seconds flat for all skills to keep it potent but not blatantly overpowered, especially since a good lockdown mesmer really doesn’t have much of a counter except for thieves as it stands.

4. This at least keeps them in a not-so-hot position, but doesn’t totally destroy them. Telling a D/D thief he can’t use CnD for 10 seconds is literally game-breaking and might as well just give mesmers a skill that just kills the target if it’s a thief. The same goes for S/P, D/P (although I hate D/P builds even as a thief and think they’re totally broken and deserve more nerfs), S/D, P/P, and so on.

1. The same can be said for any glass cannon spec though (besides warriors). Just look at elementalists. They have the lowest base HP and armor, no stealth/spammable evades and no massive gap openers. When they’re caught, they’re just as boned as a thief.

2. Except in my post I specifically made sure to mention that interrupting a skill wouldn’t deduct the initiative cost; only put it on a cooldown. This holds for true for the other 7 classes.

3. I agree, increasing the interrupt cooldown by an extra 5 seconds is absurd. Infact, the base cooldown for ranger’s Rapid Fire is 10 seconds, and traited 8 seconds. So this easily interrupted skill will not only completely stop a major portion of damage, it will also put it on a longer cooldown!

4. I agree that locking a thief out of CnD for 10 seconds would be extremely detrimental to the class to an extent. However, like I discussed in the OP, this would solve the issue of 5-trigger-happy offhand dagger thieves being able to immediately re-use CnD with little-to-no punishment, which is true for every other class. To use the same example, interrupting a ranger’s rapid fire will remove a major factor of their damage for 5-10 seconds.

While this sounds harsh, I personally feel it adds another layer of skill to combat by coercing you to think about covering your important casts with stability or baiting certain cooldowns to avoid being interrupted in the first place. You can find countless examples of this in high-level tpvp play, which also explains why interrupt mesmers are not an issue for these players and do not have a definite place in the current meta.

Maybe the idea is that the thief is supposed to be the counter.

Renny.6571:

DeceiverX.8361:

1. The cost of being interrupted on GC thieves is pretty much insta-death. I’m pretty sure that’s about as punishing as it gets.

2. One could argue that losing half your resources for no gain would also be considered a pretty mean trade-off. Dunno about you, but losing 6 init and then also going on a 10 second cooldown on a skill which requires constant use just seems silly OP.

3. That’s not to say I don’t agree or disagree, but I think a flat 10 seconds is crazy. Would make a lot more sense to have the timer increase by like 3 seconds flat for all skills to keep it potent but not blatantly overpowered, especially since a good lockdown mesmer really doesn’t have much of a counter except for thieves as it stands.

4. This at least keeps them in a not-so-hot position, but doesn’t totally destroy them. Telling a D/D thief he can’t use CnD for 10 seconds is literally game-breaking and might as well just give mesmers a skill that just kills the target if it’s a thief. The same goes for S/P, D/P (although I hate D/P builds even as a thief and think they’re totally broken and deserve more nerfs), S/D, P/P, and so on.

1. The same can be said for any glass cannon spec though (besides warriors). Just look at elementalists. They have the lowest base HP and armor, no stealth/spammable evades and no massive gap openers. When they’re caught, they’re just as boned as a thief.

2. Except in my post I specifically made sure to mention that interrupting a skill wouldn’t deduct the initiative cost; only put it on a cooldown. This holds for true for the other 7 classes.

3. I agree, increasing the interrupt cooldown by an extra 5 seconds is absurd. Infact, the base cooldown for ranger’s Rapid Fire is 10 seconds, and traited 8 seconds. So this easily interrupted skill will not only completely stop a major portion of damage, it will also put it on a longer cooldown!

4. I agree that locking a thief out of CnD for 10 seconds would be extremely detrimental to the class to an extent. However, like I discussed in the OP, this would solve the issue of 5-trigger-happy offhand dagger thieves being able to immediately re-use CnD with little-to-no punishment, which is true for every other class. To use the same example, interrupting a ranger’s rapid fire will remove a major factor of their damage for 5-10 seconds.

While this sounds harsh, I personally feel it adds another layer of skill to combat by coercing you to think about covering your important casts with stability or baiting certain cooldowns to avoid being interrupted in the first place. You can find countless examples of this in high-level tpvp play, which also explains why interrupt mesmers are not an issue for these players and do not have a definite place in the current meta.

1.) Not really, though. Mist form is a stun break and has a duration longer than most CC effects, prevents new incoming CC effects, and allows for re-positioning. I’d argue that eles have it substantially better than thieves do in regards to getting CC’ed.

2.) Again, you need to focus more on how dependent thieves are on some skills. I’d probably agree with you more if it wasn’t the case that pretty much what allows thieves to actually work in combat is the fact they pretty much bank on the repeated use of maybe two or three skills and one type of attack pattern. If those other two were more potent in the particular builds they corresponded to (which is almost impossible due to how some weapon sets can play with various build types), then this would have more merit. Strictly speaking, though it’s like telling a mesmer they cannot summon clones nor use their F1-F3 skills for ten seconds. That’s a pretty big hit, don’t ya think?

3.) Right, so 3 seconds is more reasonable?

4.) Again, the problem lies in that the dependency is too big to shut them out of for such an extended period, and there are really no means of dealing with it. Unfortunately your example is flawed, too, though. Rapid Fire actually has strictly lower damage – by quite a large margin, even including the vuln stacks – than a longbow auto attack. Rapid Fire might seem like it deals a lot of damage, but it really doesn’t. Again, my point in that other classes have means with dealing with the cooldown whereas thieves can’t at all.

Again, another issue is that thieves have almost no access to stability, and aside from dagger storm, which cannot be used to prevent the loss of other attacks, requires the thief to build specifically for it, effectively putting only a few niche builds even remotely capable with dealing with such harsh penalties.

Telling a D/D thief he can’t use CnD for 10 seconds is literally game-breaking and might as well just give mesmers a skill that just kills the target if it’s a thief.

You mean like moa?

DeceiverX.8361:

1.) Not really, though. Mist form is a stun break and has a duration longer than most CC effects, prevents new incoming CC effects, and allows for re-positioning. I’d argue that eles have it substantially better than thieves do in regards to getting CC’ed.

2.) Again, you need to focus more on how dependent thieves are on some skills. I’d probably agree with you more if it wasn’t the case that pretty much what allows thieves to actually work in combat is the fact they pretty much bank on the repeated use of maybe two or three skills and one type of attack pattern. If those other two were more potent in the particular builds they corresponded to (which is almost impossible due to how some weapon sets can play with various build types), then this would have more merit. Strictly speaking, though it’s like telling a mesmer they cannot summon clones nor use their F1-F3 skills for ten seconds. That’s a pretty big hit, don’t ya think?

3.) Right, so 3 seconds is more reasonable?

4.) Again, the problem lies in that the dependency is too big to shut them out of for such an extended period, and there are really no means of dealing with it. Unfortunately your example is flawed, too, though. Rapid Fire actually has strictly lower damage – by quite a large margin, even including the vuln stacks – than a longbow auto attack. Rapid Fire might seem like it deals a lot of damage, but it really doesn’t. Again, my point in that other classes have means with dealing with the cooldown whereas thieves can’t at all.

Again, another issue is that thieves have almost no access to stability, and aside from dagger storm, which cannot be used to prevent the loss of other attacks, requires the thief to build specifically for it, effectively putting only a few niche builds even remotely capable with dealing with such harsh penalties.

1. I have to disagree with you on this point. Thieves are, in my opinion, extremely well-equipped to deal with CC. While it’s not as blatantly obvious as “stun break and 3 second invulnerability”, they have capacity to completely mitigate and avoid damage/CC through teleports (shadowstep, infiltrator’s signet, infiltrator’s strike, shadow strike), blinds (black powder, blinding powder, signet of shadows, shadow shot), stealth (blinding powder, shadow refuge, hide in shadows, cnd) and of course evades (dodge rolls, disabling shot, withdraw, signet of agility, roll for initiative).

2(+4; they’re basically the same point). Every class is dependent on their skills going off at the right time; thief is unique in the fact that they can do their skills multiple times, but it shouldn’t mean they are exempt from the regular rules of interruption because their resource allows them to do this. In saying this, I also have to disagree that thieves are reliant on using the same skill multiple times. While it is effective in certain instances, such as finishing off an opponent with repeated heartseekers, it is my understanding that initiative was designed with the intent that all skills would be useful used in conjunction with the others (pls don’t mention d/d 3 I just couldn’t, lol), similar to how the other class skill bars function, but also having the option to apply quick burst such as the example I gave. This is my primary reasoning for why normalising the way interrupts affect thieves and in doing so adds more depth to combat. Specific 1-button playstyles that are considered cheesy, such as S/P Pistol Whip spamming, would become manageable and allow for some counterplay, but if played properly well can still be just as devastating as it is in its current state.

3. Agree, 5 seconds is too long; 3 seems more reasonable. Before I conclusively state my opinion on it though, I’d like to hear the devs’ reasoning on the upcoming livestream.

To address another topic you brough up:

Again, my point in that other classes have means with dealing with the cooldown whereas thieves can’t at all.

Would you mind explaining what means other classes have for dealing with cooldowns that a thief doesn’t?

(Quoted Posts too long)

1.) They can be well-prepared to prevent it… if they again give up large portions of their build/utility slots to CC prevention. Infil signet and shadowstep are considered poor utilities and are rarely run, only exclusively used as dedicated bailouts if necessary due to how easily CC can ruin a thief, for many other utilities offer much better synergy and overall are simply better choices for a thief. Infiltrator’s strike is no longer instant-cast, can be interrupted in both teleporting and returning, cannot be used while under the effects of CC/does not stunbreak. Shadow Strike isn’t a stunbreak. If a CC is landing, it will hit them at the end of the teleport. Blind accessibility is good for prevention, but again I’m not disagreeing with x/P blindspam. Almost all of the mentioned spammable blinds require immense build investment. A thief running all blinding utilities and blindspam traits with pistol offhand is going to outright suck. Prevention options don’t necessarily imply accessibility.

2/3.) Far from it. Initiative was designed for the sake of repeated skill use. It’s why there are no cooldowns and why the overall casting cost comes from a resource pool. It allows for repeated use of some abilities to an extent, and managing that resource is the critical difference between good and bad thief play: if you don’t all-in at the right time, you might not kill your target before he kills you; conversely, if you all-in at the wrong time, you have no access to your remaining skills. Instead of skill use being mashing 12345, play becomes much more like 12-12-12-3 or a substituted 4 or whatever based on situation. Your damage, utility, and so on is defined as a thief and comes from a certain sub-rotation usually consisting of different abilities being used together repeatedly (or just repeatedly). Whether or not this is “cheesy” is irrelevant. This is how the class was designed to play, and frankly is the only way to play. Some skills and builds are just more potent than others, notably in the form of 10/30/30 D/P permastealth (complaints justified) and DPS S/P pistol whip (which honestly is a trash build and something people shouldn’t be complaining about due to how easy it is to avoid the damage). It’s why I agreed a +3 second value is much better than the suggested flat 10 second cooldown. A thief will then go to 3 seconds, which can be somewhat justified. 10, which isn’t absurd for the rest of the classes due to their already-existing cooldowns, is just overly-harsh for thieves because it shuts down all build paths for the entire class by getting off one interrupt which is likely to occur due to the necessity in recycling a few select abilities as mentioned above. Interrupting at all will likely be on a core skill and break the entire class longer than it can survive for.

Other classes have better means of fighting back because their other weapon skills/abilities synergize better and are often useful in themselves. Think of thief builds:

What’s D/D without CnD?
P/P without unload?
D/P without HS or Blinding Powder?
S/D without shadowstep or Flanking Strike?
S/P wthout Pistol whip?

A sitting duck for 2000, Alex.

It’s just something we can’t raise concerns about yet. We have no idea how it’ll play out, and frankly, it just makes more sense to keep it as it is for now instead of stating it’s unfair that thieves get special treatment. As I stated, a thief that gets CC’ed in this regard would become literally useless. I’m not sure if a style of play which gives an entire class no recovery options upon landing one effect of many is both fair or even desirable for the sake of the game.

Posters in this thread need to l2summarize. Way too many walls of text. My opinion:

• Thieves should not have any form of interruption immunity. They should always be punished for being interrupted (i.e., losing initiative), like every other class.

• Interrupt CDs on thieves’ weapon skills doesn’t fit well with the initiative system. That said, if thief weapon skills didn’t promote spamming I might be in favor of it.

• My solution: Initiative loss on all interrupted skills. For the new Power Block trait, double the initiative loss.

BrunoBRS.5178:

logged in to voice my support as a thief main, because i think it’s silly that thieves get a free pass on a lot of stuff because of initiative. now i think initiative is a really interesting mechanic that allows thief skills to have a very different approach than everyone else in the game. however, to think that a shutdown mesmer (ironically, the bane of my assassin in GW1, since it would cut all my skills and energy regen while dealing DoT) can’t do anything to a thief beyond a quick scare is silly.

thieves do need to face the consequences of being interrupted and chilled just like everyone else. maybe the chill shouldn’t slow ini regen down 66%, but that’s a discussion for another thread. the point here is that it is quite honestly unfair that being skillfully countered means nothing to the thief. so i’m here, voicing my support that the skill should, yes, be shut down when interrupted, with the ini cost being unaffected. the simple solution is make it so initiative is only deducted from the skill after the cast is over.

I couldn’t call it a quick scare, they still hurt a lot unless your roaming in which case you can get insane dps with the luxury of defences (foods, wvw guard stacks, oils, different runes/stat sets). Initiative is fine, what I’d like is for a rework on the repeated use of skills aka spamming. I don’t think its skilled at all, and it makes us look bad. In pvp often I’ll mock my own teammate if I see them spamming hs or pw, because its pathetic.

Rework the initiative costs of the skills and make activation of the same skill cost 1 more initiative each time. Debuff lasts 1.5 seconds. So atm, spamming Hs 3 times would cost you roughly 12 initiative (1 back from natural initiative regen) assuming the cost of HS was to remain at 3. Or even add a 1 second cooldown on skill activation, so literal spamming isn’t allowed. I just hate seeing thieves do it, there are 3 other skills (unless you’re d/d, in which case I’m sorry for you..), use them. I doubt the intention of initiative was to permit this kind of behavior, the goal was to allow quick decisions and/or recovery if you are interrupted. As bizarre as balance is atm I still don’t think anyone at Anet is that kitten to want anyone to press the same button over, and over, and over, and over (excluding zhaitan ending).

Would much rather just see a massive reduction on HS’s higher-end HP damage… by a very large margin. I think it’s unnecessary and would solve a lot of the spam-kill issues with it. Would be nice if it did:
(current damage at < 25% hp * 1.25) * (1.01 – (target’s current health percentage as an integer / 100)).

So a HS at a full-health target would deal 1% of its maximum damage. Yet as a finisher for a target at about 25% health, it would deal approximately the same as it does now, increasing over the number slightly below 20% but dealing less when above).

As honestly, when a warrior or an ele or mesmer runs away, I need to spam that skill just to catch up. The skill’s design aspect to catch up to opponents is not compromised here, and it works as intended to finish off weakened targets.