Guild Wars 2

Shadow Refuge has a 60 second cooldown and is arguably one of the strongest utilities in the game. Either the cooldown needs increased or cooldowns from other professions need decreased to create some kind of fairness.

Mostly I think it just needs its CD increased though.

Some examples of some other abilities:

Arcane shield has a 75 second cooldown and I think most people would agree Shadow Refuge is way stronger.

Armor of earth – 90 second cooldown now, 75 after next balance patch as they said on ready up – on either cooldown it’s worse.

Glyph of Storms – 60 second cooldown, way worse

Spectral Walk – 60 second cooldown, nice for personal survivability but shadow refuge is probably just as good or better for personal survivability and can be used for teammates as well for many situations.

Veil – 90 second cooldown – Worse in almost every way ( I realize it is used for zergs in wvwvw but the limit of 5 in spvp is a whole team, perfect opportunity to split skills, although I’d be a fan of limiting stealth to no more than there already is in spvp)

Sanctuary – Solid ability that can probably help rez people a little more often than Shadow Refuge but on twice the cooldown.

Shadow Refuge is similar to other profession rez utilities like Necro and Mesmers resurrects and those utilities were nerfed very hard a long time ago. I would say these utilities are on longer cooldowns than shadow refuge and probably succeed less.

Shadow Refuge success rate is highly based on the thiefs judgement but in the right hands its very successful and in a lot of situations practically a free rez.

Edit: Something I forgot to mention is that Shadow Refuge actually heals downed players health too, increasing rez speed.

Shadow Refuge also becomes instantly useless if you manage to knock them out of it. Most other skills doesn’t have that risk involved.

Tachii.3506:

Shadow Refuge also becomes instantly useless if you manage to knock them out of it. Most other skills doesn’t have that risk involved.

Armor of earth gets boons Ripped.
Arcane Shield takes 3 hits from something that hits multiple times(absorbing very little damage think illusion greatsword attack or ele arc lightning), and the enemy dodges the explosion, or you even die from an unblockable attack.
Mesmer and Necro utilities get interrupted or the downed body gets blown away from where they were casting the rez or the target just gets stomped before you are able to get it off
Etc.

Plenty of utilities have a huge risk. Shadow Refuge has a low amount of risk if you ask me. At 60 seconds cooldown it’s reward is extremely high. Has multiple uses as well.

Getting boon ripped doesn’t seem like a huge risk. Only some classes can steal/rip boons (usually has to trait for it), while almost every class can CC a thief outside of their refuge.

Using SR to res is also a setup waiting for classes to cleave the downed + thief. Again, I don’t see the “extremely high” reward with little risk.

SR has its uses and its counters. The problems when I visit these class balance threads usually comes down to eles being underpowered. Just buff their cantrips or something.

Tachii.3506:

Getting boon ripped doesn’t seem like a huge risk. Only some classes can steal/rip boons (usually has to trait for it), while almost every class can CC a thief outside of their refuge.

Using SR to res is also a setup waiting for classes to cleave the downed + thief. Again, I don’t see the “extremely high” reward with little risk.

SR has its uses and its counters. The problems when I visit these class balance threads usually comes down to eles being underpowered. Just buff their cantrips or something.

Needless to say we don’t agree on the riskyness of getting knocked out. Just use a few of your many dodges within the shadow refuge and you won’t get knocked out. If you have a hard time staying in the circle just use Shadow Refuge against a wall and dodge against the wall.

On the subject of getting cleaved on downed bodies. This happens regardless of the shadow refuge, the shadow refuge doesn’t set up for it. A huge problem is one team doesn’t know if they are keeping the enemy down. As a team we’ve blown tons of cooldowns into shadow refuges sometimes and then they all pop out full health and we have no cooldowns left.

Shadow Refuge also doesn’t just stealth the downed player it actually heals their downed health, this alone can make it too late to drop a bunch of aoe on them because they can get rezzed so fast. This is also how thieves rez themselves so often when you actually do down them in the shadow refuge. Usually by the time they get revealed and are healing themselves in down state you have about 1 second to hit them or they self rez themselves. Often in a team fight you don’t have the kind of time to sit around for 12 seconds and wait for a thief to reveal while he rezes himself either. Often this doesn’t happen though, a teammate just walks up and finishes the last 5% of rezzing needed. Self rez complete.

+1

You may want to change the topic to wwvw/pvp as this is worse in wvw due to multiple thieves chaining refuge/lower revealed/much more z axis movement potential.

Tachii.3506:

Shadow Refuge also becomes instantly useless if you manage to knock them out of it. Most other skills doesn’t have that risk involved.

That relies on your opponent having a push/pull available on the current weapon/weapon swap available and being close enough to the thief to use it, as well as the knockback being non-targeted as stealth breaks targets. A well placed shadowstep/withdraw will migrate most of that risk, as does using refuge on the appropriate terrain.

As well as that, being in refuge isn’t stopping a thief dodging, moving (the radius of shadow refuge is decent after all) or using basi to proc lyssa runes (obviously this is an assumption on the thives build, but is very common due to the low cd on basi and the strength of Lyssa runes).

Yes, Shadow Refuge does have some counterplay. But in terms of risk/reward, especially in comparision to other skills in the game, the skill is simply too rewarding.

NO! is my answer to this.

Shadow Refuge is well balanced. You have to stand in it for the total duration or else you’ll be thrown out of stealth. That puts a giant target on you, because if you’re knocked/pulled/feared out, you wasted the move, and it’s VERY easy to down a thief in Refuge if you have multiple AoEs thrown upon it. You guys just really need to stop complaining about things you don’t like, especially something as well balanced as this.

If it was the Black Powder → Heartseeker combo for stealth, I would understand, or if it was even complaining about Backstab’s damage…but Shadow Refuge? I’m sorry, you have no sympathy or support from me.

Wow really? Any one who plays a thief knows doing that skill will very possibly kill you. Wether its a knockout what it auto apples revealed our just straight damage. Ya you can angle it to a wall but that dosnt stop aoe dmg, and who says a barrier is near you? All that skill is if you have any common sense is a big target to hit, just cluster bombing it will kill the thief inside. Sure you can dodge to evade the knock back to but if you need stealth that bad chances are your waiting for a dodge to charge. I can’t wait for the day it gets to the point of “nerf thief traps to op”. The whole self trees thing usually is only possible with 30 in sa since you tick 300hp while stealthed, engis can self res without any trait req, just takes having a certain tool kit.

Actually, somebody already asked for a nerf to Caltrops, Splatter. That person was ripped to shreds by a good many people, tons of non-thieves as well as thieves were doing that to him.

Really? People still struggle with Shadow Refuge?

I love when enemy Thieves use it. It’s a gigantic “attack here” sign. I am more than happy to oblige if I don’t just send them flying out of it, and even better if it’s an attempt to res someone – double kill! Haven’t been fooled by that utility in at least 5-6 months now.

I have to agree with a lot of the others here. If you haven’t learned how to play against shadow refuge by now, I don’t know what to say. It is the easiest utility to counter. Easy to knock people out of and if they thief leaves early, they lose stealth. Easy kill.

I can agree it is very strong for what it does. But to increase its cooldown I think would require some better reasons that the ones you just gave.

Shadow Refuge is probably the best utility a thief has, it heals, it stealths, and its a combo field, (not that anyone really uses it for that). Blinding Powder comes to mind when I see SR wanting its cooldown increased. Its a skill that can stealth for up to 3 seconds, it doesn’t heal but you still get the stealth off and enough people helping with the res, the downed player can get up and still be in stealth. Obviously it would require a little more coordination than that, but I imagine you get the general idea.

Other res utilities have less of a risk depending on situation to situation. For example; a mesmer can cover his Illusion of Life with distortion (if necessary) and it won’t be interrupted, less of a risk.

But since you hadn’t thrown any numbers around, I would like to say, 75s CD or 70 would be plenty. Enough to make a difference if it was used it mistakenly or used correctly, but still isn’t available when you need it again.

Phantaram.1265:

Shadow Refuge has a 60 second cooldown and is arguably one of the strongest utilities in the game.

Please make your argument as to why it’s one of the strongest utilities in the game. Without a supporting argument, all you’ve done is assemble a committee of words.

Shadow Refuge is similar to other profession rez utilities like Necro and Mesmers resurrects and those utilities were nerfed very hard a long time ago. I would say these utilities are on longer cooldowns than shadow refuge and probably succeed less.

…How is it similar? Do these utilities drop an unmistakable, highly visible AoE that you can drop AoE/CC/Knockbacks into to counter the res? Does there still need to be a body locked on top of the downed player ressing? Does poison/cleave damage effect them in the same way? Tangentially related, but does the thief have a huge base health pool or immunity skills to help mitigate the damage he’ll be eating (Due to the highly visible AoE which screams “I’m attempting a Res”)?

I see a whole lot of hearsay here (“I think”, “probably”, “I would say”,etc etc etc), which is fine, your opinion is your own, but you’re not really making any good arguments that reinforce your point. Your comparisons aren’t very strong, and your anecdotal evidence isn’t very convincing.

“Needless to say we don’t agree on the riskyness of getting knocked out. Just use a few of your many dodges within the shadow refuge” I’m sorry what? Try dodging a lot in that circle and see that it gets so much smaller when you need to maneuver inside of it. Not to mention thieves only have two dodges, like everyone else three if you get the trait that returns some endurance. The other dodges come from SD 3 and DD3, SD3 will surely send you out of the friggin’ field in the first place and DD3 is too short a dodge. And even if they didn’t, most ppl run inside the circle swinging away like a smart person should, so you use one of the attack dodges, you’ll hit them revealing yourself.

This is getting realy ridiculous now.
Play with ae CC and this impudent shadow refuge will no longer waste your time.

yeaaah let’s nerf refuge (and at that thief role in pve as well very little team utility that they have) because you are too lazy to use CCs/aoe

no, ty

We can reduce shadow refuge CD even more

Shadow Refuge is on a long enough cooldown already and is pretty much a bullseye for spamming aoe and CC here.

I’d support as 10s, maybe 15s CD increase. It’s an extremely powerful utility for its CD.

Arganthium.5638:

I’d support as 10s, maybe 15s CD increase. It’s an extremely powerful utility for its CD.

So is portal, but that’s on a 1 minute cooldown too. Anything more than that and it’s in Elite Skill category.

Its pretty annoying when you cannot or you have no clue how to counter stealth right?
heck how can i become Hidden Killer if i cannot hide? i play d/d sbow Thief btw, and yet SR 60sec cooldown is more balance than 4sec stealth interval using BP+Leap (in my point of view) in reality i need to use my SR to scout and kill/gank enemy before stealth fade (i wish you already knew how long stealth last using SR, its fine you can use calculator) oh and dont forget the +sec when traited to Ninjutsu.
The sad thing is you play Thief almost a week

I see nothing but QQ from OP – first S/D too powerful (even though the topic was created after both Larcenous Strike and Infiltrator’s Return nerfs) and now Shadow Refuge. It wasn’t too powerful for you for approx. 17+- months (excluding beta)? People who posted before me have already mentioned that most of the time refuge is a death sentence. Unlike any other stealth skill in the game refuge has 2-3 factors that allow you to counterplay it.
1) Freaking huge red circle that shouts hammer-stun-me! / drop those marks/nades/bombs on me! / unload that phoenix+ l.strike+arcane blast + ring of fire combo on me!
2) Even though refuge is capable of stealthing you for quite long a time, it requires you to stay in it for that 5 sec, which you obviously know. Plenty of time to knock or fear out. But hey! It isn’t that you don’t get longer stealth because I knocked you back – you’re revealed for those 4 secs as well.
2.5-3) Unlike Mass Invis, you have to stay in it to get full duration.
You’d know from experience that Refuge on the downed person is an aoe magnet.

There are many utilities that are stronger than others and yet some of them don’t have direct counter (already mentioned Armour of Earth, since tell me how warrior/ranger/another ele supposed to strip those boons?).

TLDR; Rage topic without solid arguments to back up QQ.

Mesmers similar ability has half the stealth duration and it’s their elite. It also doesn’t keep you in stealth for ~20 seconds.

Stogzlol.4795:

Mesmers similar ability has half the stealth duration and it’s their elite. It also doesn’t keep you in stealth for ~20 seconds.

Mass Invis also has 1200 stealthing and doesn’t require you to stay in a small radius to get all the benefits. I don’t want to compare those two skill at all, tbh though. They are given to different classes and serve different purpose in the mechanics of each class. On the one hand you have entire Shadow Arts tree with a plethora of stealthing skills and on the other, clones, phantasms, shatters + a handful of stealth

RyuDragnier.9476:

Arganthium.5638:

I’d support as 10s, maybe 15s CD increase. It’s an extremely powerful utility for its CD.

So is portal, but that’s on a 1 minute cooldown too. Anything more than that and it’s in Elite Skill category.

Portal has a 90s CD (which can in fact increase).

Veil has a 90s CD, Illusion of Life has a 130s(? On my phone atm) CD, Mist Form has a 75s CD, Sanctuary has a 120s CD… Shadow Refuge is far from being in the “elite skill category”.

I have full confidence the ANet balance team will read this thread, realize the grievous mistake they made and fix the problem by giving Shadow Refuge a 30 second cool down.