Guild Wars 2

Hello anet,
I implore you to reconsider how initiative works, thieves being able to blind spam and spam pistol whip, is kind of ridiculous in addition to their high mobility. Honestly a slower initiative regain or a higher initiative cost would be nice on those skills and more. It would be a least a step forward to balancing that class.

Don’t care much about the spam. I just want, and constantly mention, Initiative interaction with the Power Block GM trait.

Carpboy.7145:

Spamming pistol whip and blackpowder eh? Both of which cost 6 initiative in spvp. A thiefs standard ini pool is 12. So 2 pistol whips. Dat spam too OP. meanwhile for the next 5 seconds the thief can do absolutely nothing while you wail on him because he has no initiative

I am sorry but you seem to be forgetting the vast amount of teleports and stealth, if you use the evade heal you recover enough initiative. In addition while in stealth you can trait to regain initiative. Utilities don’t require initiative so the thief wont just be there standing . Also don’t forget about those perma vigor thieves that just dodge for days.

Kukchi.6173:

I am sorry but you seem to be forgetting the vast amount of teleports and stealth, if you use the evade heal you recover enough initiative. In addition while in stealth you can trait to regain initiative. Utilities don’t require initiative so the thief wont just be there standing . Also don’t forget about those perma vigor thieves that just dodge for days.

Obviously this one has no idea how thieves work…

Here’s a few things wrong with your statement:
1. Evade heal (withdraw) doesn’t regen initiative. What you are thinking of is (roll for initiative) a utility with a 50s cd that regens 6 initiative. It evades but doesn’t heal.

2. Thief utilities don’t have initiative costs, you are right. Although, neither do yours.

3. If they are using pistol whip, they are not invisible. Also, we only regain 2 initiative when we 1st enter stealth. Any further stealth stacks no longer give initiative.

4. Initiative has absolutely nothing to do with perma vigor thieves. The entirety of our vigor comes from either stealing the boons or from 2 traits. Each trait relies upon using abilities that don’t use initiative.

Please do your research next time you make a QQ thread. I know this is asking a lot but the entirety of the community would appreciate it if you would.

The thing about Thieves is that we have no easy access to boons so all we have to sustain is through mobility and stealth, not in anyway do we have Perma vigor, but some run Signet of Agility and Sigils of Energy that refills endurance along with traits that refill endurance and stuff like vigorous recovery which got nerfed to 5s.

On the contrary our skills are not spammable because of Init especially the teleports you may be talking about which has a cast time, good thieves make sure they use their skills wisely and disengage to allow their init to regen and for heal + utility CDs.

randomfightfan.4091:

Kukchi.6173:

I am sorry but you seem to be forgetting the vast amount of teleports and stealth, if you use the evade heal you recover enough initiative. In addition while in stealth you can trait to regain initiative. Utilities don’t require initiative so the thief wont just be there standing . Also don’t forget about those perma vigor thieves that just dodge for days.

Obviously this one has no idea how thieves work…

Here’s a few things wrong with your statement:
1. Evade heal (withdraw) doesn’t regen initiative. What you are thinking of is (roll for initiative) a utility with a 50s cd that regens 6 initiative. It evades but doesn’t heal.

2. Thief utilities don’t have initiative costs, you are right. Although, neither do yours.

3. If they are using pistol whip, they are not invisible. Also, we only regain 2 initiative when we 1st enter stealth. Any further stealth stacks no longer give initiative.

4. Initiative has absolutely nothing to do with perma vigor thieves. The entirety of our vigor comes from either stealing the boons or from 2 traits. Each trait relies upon using abilities that don’t use initiative.

Please do your research next time you make a QQ thread. I know this is asking a lot but the entirety of the community would appreciate it if you would.

Hello,
I feel like you failed to see my response. This thread is about fixing the issues that thieves have and how initiative needs some rework. If you feel the need to personally attack me then i would suggest sending a private message. I dont think bringing anymore of your toxic comments to this thread is necessary. I might of mistaken myself with the evade heal recovering initiative. But the fact still remains.

We can increase initiative pool and decrease initiative regen, so blindly spamming would be heavily punished, but then thief’s sustained damage would be terrible. That would require increasing damage output – the more initiative you have, the more damage you deal (like trickery’s 5th trait).

Your suggestion of tightening the window of initiative would be a mistake, because it would make this class even more faceroll. Better idea would be removing initiative and giving cooldowns, but it will never happen.

I think the best solution would be slightly increasing initiative cost of some skills, and returning initiative when they successfully land. For example, pistol whip could cost 1 ini more, but if you manage to interrupt a foe, it gives you back 1 ini and has increased damage by 15%.
Black powder costs 1 ini more, returns 1 ini if its shot connects and has longer smoke field duration by 1 sec.
Larcenous strike would be available only if you actually evade an attack with flanking strike, and could steal 2 boons instead of 1.

These are good anti-spam mechanics.

Thieves are quite weak overall in PvP, that’s why many are going over to either P/D to join the condispam high survival club or S/D for the dodgespam club, both which are way stronger in combat than other alternatives.

If I could play D/D without getting kitten on by:
Turret spam, minion spam, fear spam, deathlyclaw spam, life blast spam, generic condispam, fellow players from the dodgespam club, 111 spam rangers, CC spam warriors, CC high dmg and heal spam eles, ele AoE spam which deals higher dmg than thieves do single target but AoE, guardians with block and blind spam and high dmg.

Believe me, I would.

Personally I find S/P quite balanced in PvP atm, you have to play smart and use blackpowder, auto-attack and interrupts, if you want to bring someone down, but when a lot of AoE is being spammed, so is Pistolwhip.

Dagins.5163:

We can increase initiative pool and decrease initiative regen, so blindly spamming would be heavily punished, but then thief’s sustained damage would be terrible. That would require increasing damage output – the more initiative you have, the more damage you deal (like trickery’s 5th trait).

Your suggestion of tightening the window of initiative would be a mistake, because it would make this class even more faceroll. Better idea would be removing initiative and giving cooldowns, but it will never happen.

I think the best solution would be slightly increasing initiative cost of some skills, and returning initiative when they successfully land. For example, pistol whip could cost 1 ini more, but if you manage to interrupt a foe, it gives you back 1 ini and has increased damage by 15%.
Black powder costs 1 ini more, returns 1 ini if its shot connects and has longer smoke field duration by 1 sec.
Larcenous strike would be available only if you actually evade an attack with flanking strike, and could steal 2 boons instead of 1.

These are good anti-spam mechanics.

Honestly a slower initiative regain or a higher initiative cost would be nice on those skills and more.

Ghostwolf.9863:

Thieves are quite weak overall in PvP, that’s why many are going over to either P/D to join the condispam high survival club or S/D for the dodgespam club, both which are way stronger in combat than other alternatives.

If I could play D/D without getting kitten on by:
Turret spam, minion spam, fear spam, deathlyclaw spam, life blast spam, generic condispam, fellow players from the dodgespam club, 111 spam rangers, CC spam warriors, CC high dmg and heal spam eles, ele AoE spam which deals higher dmg than thieves do single target but AoE, guardians with block and blind spam and high dmg.

Believe me, I would.

I feel you are using the term “spam” loosely. Because most of those skill arent spammable and do have high cooldowns. Some are even highly telegraph able.

Kukchi.6173:

I feel you are using the term “spam” loosely. Because most of those skill arent spammable and do have high cooldowns. Some are even highly telegraph able.

Loosely, maybe, but many of those things I mentioned are way stronger than PW, especially when PW is used 2 or 3 times in a row, but yet PW is the one that needs to be toned down? =p

Ghostwolf.9863:

Kukchi.6173:

I feel you are using the term “spam” loosely. Because most of those skill arent spammable and do have high cooldowns. Some are even highly telegraph able.

Loosely, maybe, but many of those things I mentioned are way stronger than PW, especially when PW is used 2 or 3 times in a row, but yet PW is the one that needs to be toned down? =p

Seeing how you play mostly thief and very little of the other classes your opinion is very biased and unwelcome. That is all based on your comments. You can spam PW a lot more than 2 to 3 times. Specially if you are traited into initiative recovery and use the rollback utility. You seem to forget also that stealthing resets a fight in favor of thieves. Especially if the opponent has used their cooldowns. Thieves need a rework with their ability to spam.

Kukchi.6173:

Seeing how you play mostly thief and very little of the other classes your opinion is very biased and unwelcome. That is all based on your comments. You can spam PW a lot more than 2 to 3 times. Specially if you are traited into initiative recovery and use the rollback utility. You seem to forget also that stealthing resets a fight in favor of thieves. Especially if the opponent has used their cooldowns. Thieves need a rework with their ability to spam.

Thief is my favourite class and I’ve played in total 2k out of 3.5k hours on it, and I’ve played nearly every possible build that makes sense. the only classes I don’t play are Ranger and Ele, but the rest Guardian, Warrior, Mesmer and Engineer I have tried many various builds on and played a lot, except necro which I’m still quite new to and still leveling to 80.

If you build an S/P thief for high intiative recovery and dodge, you will indeed be able to dodge and use PW more frequent, but you deal low damage. Conditions, High Damage and CC will destroy you quickly as always, If you want RfI for more initiative recovery you either go without shadow step or shadow refuge eliminating additional access to teleports and access to stealth, also after using RfI you have to use IS to get back into the fight which uses 3 of the 6 ini it recovered, infiltrator’s signet is more or less mandatory for the low cd stunbreaker extra ini regen and a gapcloser.

Sorry, but sounds like what you are describing is 6/6/6/6/6 with 6 utility slots.

Kukchi.6173:

Seeing how you play mostly thief and very little of the other classes your opinion is very biased and unwelcome. That is all based on your comments. You can spam PW a lot more than 2 to 3 times. Specially if you are traited into initiative recovery and use the rollback utility. You seem to forget also that stealthing resets a fight in favor of thieves. Especially if the opponent has used their cooldowns. Thieves need a rework with their ability to spam.

kettle… black… etc > <!!

PW thieves… dun really stealth… or have high mobility, not if they want to… PW :>

You can blind spam, but will lose out in dps (not to mention, the way thieves blind you is to basically take their initiative and shove them into your eye :>). you have a set up where you can spam skills, but you won’t have those nifty stealth reset goodness, you can be ultra mobile and evasive but you lose alot of dps and ‘spamability’ etc etc etc

Pointless discussion no class is going to be remade. Not everyone uses initiative gain builds or stealth some just don’t like it. If you have never played thief you wouldn’t understand how glassy this class is sure fighting a good one can be stressful but the overall tankiness is the weakest in the game.
Like somebody mention before p/d condi and s/d crit are the most popular thief build because they provide replacement for tanking mainly stealth and/or evade. Using initiative to cleanse,heal or evade means you are not attacking justifying the concept of high burst on thief condi or crit. There is a reason why p/p never works even with high damage.

Kukchi.6173:

I am sorry but you seem to be forgetting the vast amount of teleports and stealth, if you use the evade heal you recover enough initiative.

Uhm, nope. Withdraw does not regenrate initiative.

In addition while in stealth you can trait to regain initiative.

Nope, there is a trait that gives 2 initiative when entering stealth, it does not regenerate initiative while in stealth.

You need to read up, wiki is linked on the top of the page.

Kukchi.6173:

Seeing how you play mostly thief and very little of the other classes your opinion is very biased and unwelcome.

Seeing how you don’t play thief and know even less about it, your opinions about it are without any value.

Op you main a war? Shame on you or asking other things get nerfed let along something that isn’t broken.

frans.8092:

Kukchi.6173:

Seeing how you play mostly thief and very little of the other classes your opinion is very biased and unwelcome.

Seeing how you don’t play thief and know even less about it, your opinions about it are without any value.

@ OP
Coming from someone that plays lots of classes in pvp, I can say that thief initiative does not need nerfed. Ive played it since release along with a good amount of time on guardian mainly. If you’re dying to 2 pistol whips in a row you need help, or you’re sitting there, not attacking, letting yourself die. You have to play aggressively against thieves.

And no, you can’t use pistol whip more than twice in a row. Do your research.

frans.8092:

Kukchi.6173:

I am sorry but you seem to be forgetting the vast amount of teleports and stealth, if you use the evade heal you recover enough initiative.

Uhm, nope. Withdraw does not regenrate initiative.

In addition while in stealth you can trait to regain initiative.

Nope, there is a trait that gives 2 initiative when entering stealth, it does not regenerate initiative while in stealth.

You need to read up, wiki is linked on the top of the page.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Roll_for_Initiative as stated i have acknowledge i made a mistake about that. All the responses to this thread are thieves upset about the issues of their classes being braught up. Initiative needs a rework.

Initiative doesn’t need a rework. It was actually changed recently to boost the base regen of it so traits didn’t have to be taken for it (min regen increased, max regen capped). All of the abilities of thieves are balanced around multiple uses. Take headshot for an example: you could used the entire initiative pool using only that skill, and get a total of 1 second of daze out of it. To do that, the thief can’t use any other weapon skills. Compare that to mesmer’s magic bullet that has a 25 second cooldown which stuns one and dazes another target for 2 seconds. The thief lacks any single skill that’s as mechanically powerful, but has the ability to use it multiple times to make up for it.

Compare heartseeker to phoenix as well. Phoenix has a 1.7 multiplier on the explosion and also has a .75 multplier on the projectile, is ranged, and can hit multiple targets, while heartseeker has a 2.0 multiplier (in the 25%-0% range), and is single target with a gap closer. Those 2 are essentially equivalent because heartseeker will be used multiple times over a longer timeframe for essentially the same results while phoenix has 1 chance to hit all the targets in a single move and has a CD to reflect that ability.

Thieves are built to be used in a series of 1v1 fights, even when they’re fighting a group, and their defensive capabilities and global cooldowns are balanced around that. Other classes are designed to fight the entire group at once and are balanced appropriately for that.

Tldr: thief weapon skills are already balanced around multiple uses.

This discussion was had last month or the month before, can’t recall.

Thief can use less weapon skills than every other profession over the course of a minute long fight. The longer the fight, the more severe the disadvantage is to the thief.

This shows initiative is not the root cause issue that people think it is. People who complain about the thief’s burst capabilities refuse to accept that this is by design.

Kukchi.6173:

All the responses to this thread are thieves upset about the issues of their classes being braught up. Initiative needs a rework.

Alternatively, we could view all of your responses as you just being upset about getting constantly stomped by a class you refuse to play or understand. You can’t just make blanket statements like you’re doing.

“Thieves know their class is broken, that’s why they defend it!”

Wrong. We defend our favorite class because people like you are ill-informed and have next to no understand of the class, mostly because you don’t play it or apparently pay any attention. I mean… kitten , somebody had to teach you the difference between withdraw and roll for initiative. If you can mess up the understand of those two, very simple to understand, skills, then you really don’t have a pedestal to preach from. Your arguments are valid, and considering our base initiative regeneration was just increased not too long ago to make the clkitten reliant on traiting for it, I would say Anet disagrees with you as well.

Using the warrior as example they have skills that can add 5 stacks of torment for 12 seconds on a 15 second cooldown.

The thieves torment source is 2 stacks of torment that last 5 seconds at the cost of 4 INI.

In order to get the same torment the warrior got from his cooldown skill the thief has to burn 12 INI.

If he burns 12 ini just to get that same level of torment (which has shorter duration BTW) he can use few other skills as he regens his INI while the warrior can use his other 4 skills then fast hands to another set.

The OP should review his premises.

if you didn’t know, thieves are not effected by the other half of the chill effect. skill cool down increase. this is not something i’d consider balanced. i understand that their mechanic is initiative, meaning no cooldowns but a mana-ish pool. chill needs to effect the rate initiative regenerates otherwise it literally does nothing(brb shadow step, SB#5)
@godz raiden, fortunately i have played a thief and with evidence i can say that no real cooldowns+no penalties for stealth(thief has more access to stealth than any other rogue class in any mmo combined) IE reduction of movement(lol they can move faster in it. how does that make sense?)and all the teleports in the universe(more than mesmer and elementalist combined) one could say that thief is not overpowered, but broken. there are no hard counters to stealth except stealth traps. failed to hit (aka back stab being blocked) does not pull the thief out of stealth as it does to other rogues in other games. the thing is, thief is working exactly as it was programmed to work, the problem is the only counter to it is aoe damage. even then i’ve seen thieves at sub 10% hp get away and heal back to full.
you can call me ‘bad’ if you wish, that’s fine. but i’d like you to go from playing thief with dual daggers to playing a necromancer with dual daggers and tell me the difficulty difference. it’s massive. i did this in reverse order and felt like a god on my thief. 4k crits were not even impressive to me(for a necromancer that’s HUGE)

Kukchi.6173:

…All the responses to this thread are thieves upset about the issues of their classes being braught up.

Strong argument, really.

/sarcasm

Lightsbane.9012:

if you didn’t know, thieves are not effected by the other half of the chill effect. skill cool down increase. this is not something i’d consider balanced. i understand that their mechanic is initiative, meaning no cooldowns but a mana-ish pool. chill needs to effect the rate initiative regenerates otherwise it literally does nothing(brb shadow step, SB#5)
@godz raiden, fortunately i have played a thief and with evidence i can say that no real cooldowns+no penalties for stealth(thief has more access to stealth than any other rogue class in any mmo combined) IE reduction of movement(lol they can move faster in it. how does that make sense?)and all the teleports in the universe(more than mesmer and elementalist combined) one could say that thief is not overpowered, but broken. there are no hard counters to stealth except stealth traps. failed to hit (aka back stab being blocked) does not pull the thief out of stealth as it does to other rogues in other games. the thing is, thief is working exactly as it was programmed to work, the problem is the only counter to it is aoe damage. even then i’ve seen thieves at sub 10% hp get away and heal back to full.
you can call me ‘bad’ if you wish, that’s fine. but i’d like you to go from playing thief with dual daggers to playing a necromancer with dual daggers and tell me the difficulty difference. it’s massive. i did this in reverse order and felt like a god on my thief. 4k crits were not even impressive to me(for a necromancer that’s HUGE)

I think you’re looking at initiative the wrong way. A lot of players see initiative as a lack of cooldowns, when in reality, the resource system is more of a global cooldown. Think of it like you would ATP and energy in the human body. You can do an exercise over and over again for a bit (spamming), but after a while you get too tired to repeat it, and you may even be too tired to do other exercises as well. So you have to cool down a bit and have a rest period before you can work some more. That’s pretty much what initiative is. So while thieves can spam weapon skills for a short amount of time and spike damage, they run out of initiative quickly doing so, and suffer for it in the long term.

Alternatively, I just this past month got a necro to 80 and started using him a lot, and I find that class to be pretty easy and godlike, so I guess the reverse of your story? Does that mean necros needs nerfs or something? No, not at all.

Anyways, anybody arguing that initiative is broken really just doesn’t understand the class mechanic, or they just don’t want to. Not sure what your problem is with chilling vs initiative is either. If it actually acted like you wanted it to then thieves would need some compensation to make up for being so easily disabled. Thieves are already one of the classes that suffer most from conditions, especially control conditions, and making them any more effective against thieves would be pretty detrimental to thief balance.

godz raiden.2631:

Lightsbane.9012:

if you didn’t know, thieves are not effected by the other half of the chill effect. skill cool down increase. this is not something i’d consider balanced. i understand that their mechanic is initiative, meaning no cooldowns but a mana-ish pool. chill needs to effect the rate initiative regenerates otherwise it literally does nothing(brb shadow step, SB#5)
@godz raiden, fortunately i have played a thief and with evidence i can say that no real cooldowns+no penalties for stealth(thief has more access to stealth than any other rogue class in any mmo combined) IE reduction of movement(lol they can move faster in it. how does that make sense?)and all the teleports in the universe(more than mesmer and elementalist combined) one could say that thief is not overpowered, but broken. there are no hard counters to stealth except stealth traps. failed to hit (aka back stab being blocked) does not pull the thief out of stealth as it does to other rogues in other games. the thing is, thief is working exactly as it was programmed to work, the problem is the only counter to it is aoe damage. even then i’ve seen thieves at sub 10% hp get away and heal back to full.
you can call me ‘bad’ if you wish, that’s fine. but i’d like you to go from playing thief with dual daggers to playing a necromancer with dual daggers and tell me the difficulty difference. it’s massive. i did this in reverse order and felt like a god on my thief. 4k crits were not even impressive to me(for a necromancer that’s HUGE)

I think you’re looking at initiative the wrong way. A lot of players see initiative as a lack of cooldowns, when in reality, the resource system is more of a global cooldown. Think of it like you would ATP and energy in the human body. You can do an exercise over and over again for a bit (spamming), but after a while you get too tired to repeat it, and you may even be too tired to do other exercises as well. So you have to cool down a bit and have a rest period before you can work some more. That’s pretty much what initiative is. So while thieves can spam weapon skills for a short amount of time and spike damage, they run out of initiative quickly doing so, and suffer for it in the long term.

Alternatively, I just this past month got a necro to 80 and started using him a lot, and I find that class to be pretty easy and godlike, so I guess the reverse of your story? Does that mean necros needs nerfs or something? No, not at all.

Anyways, anybody arguing that initiative is broken really just doesn’t understand the class mechanic, or they just don’t want to. Not sure what your problem is with chilling vs initiative is either. If it actually acted like it does for every other class to then thieves would need nothing to make up for it because of their teleports. Thieves are already one of the classes that suffer most from conditions, especially control conditions, and making them any more effective against thieves would be pretty detrimental to thief balance.

if you find necromancer to be insanely easy i’m not sure that does much for the credibility of your argument.
also, i fixed it for you homie. if we were talking about guardians you’d be right, assuming they had no condi cleanses anyway.

Players need to learn other professions first before they complain about them. Like seriously.

It doesn’t necessarily need a re-work.

But it only works well in weapon-sets where ALL skills find common use. Only then is there a true opportunity cost. And without it, Initiative as a resource fails.

Lightsbane.9012:

if you find necromancer to be insanely easy i’m not sure that does much for the credibility of your argument.
also, i fixed it for you homie. if we were talking about guardians you’d be right, assuming they had no condi cleanses anyway.

Sorry bud, you can’t use the “I played thief and found it easy” line but then when someone else says “I played your class and found it easy too” say it does nothing for their credibility. That’s just saying “As long as I say it, it’s true. If someone else says something similar as an attempted counter argument, it cannot be true, because I didn’t say it.” But congrats on being infallible. It’s nice to know that god is residing here on these forums instead of helping the starving children in Africa.

But yeah, just because thieves have teleports does not mean that initiative should be changed to allow chill to have a more meaningful impact on it. The counter to thieves really isn’t supposed to be soft CC anyways (honestly, if you can’t come to that conclusion after recognizing they have a ton of teleports and in combat movement skills, then you’re just beyond helping). Hard CC is how you beat thieves, or besting them in sustained damage (or burst damage in some cases depending on the thief’s build). If you’re using chill to try and gain an advantage over a thief instead of fears/knockdowns/immobilizes then that’s not the initiative system’s fault. That’s your own fault for not understanding how to fight a thief.

Complain all you want, you’re not going to get a change just because you can’t handle it.

godz raiden.2631:

Lightsbane.9012:

if you find necromancer to be insanely easy i’m not sure that does much for the credibility of your argument.
also, i fixed it for you homie. if we were talking about guardians you’d be right, assuming they had no condi cleanses anyway.

Sorry bud, you can’t use the “I played thief and found it easy” line but then when someone else says “I played your class and found it easy too” say it does nothing for their credibility. That’s just saying “As long as I say it, it’s true. If someone else says something similar as an attempted counter argument, it cannot be true, because I didn’t say it.” But congrats on being infallible. It’s nice to know that god is residing here on these forums instead of helping the starving children in Africa.

But yeah, just because thieves have teleports does not mean that initiative should be changed to allow chill to have a more meaningful impact on it. The counter to thieves really isn’t supposed to be soft CC anyways (honestly, if you can’t come to that conclusion after recognizing they have a ton of teleports and in combat movement skills, then you’re just beyond helping). Hard CC is how you beat thieves, or besting them in sustained damage (or burst damage in some cases depending on the thief’s build). If you’re using chill to try and gain an advantage over a thief instead of fears/knockdowns/immobilizes then that’s not the initiative system’s fault. That’s your own fault for not understanding how to fight a thief.

Complain all you want, you’re not going to get a change just because you can’t handle it.

well i can see we’re getting nowhere. have a good one.

Kukchi.6173:

Kukchi.6173:

I am sorry but you seem to be forgetting the vast amount of teleports and stealth, if you use the evade heal you recover enough initiative.

frans.8092:

Uhm, nope. Withdraw does not regenrate initiative.

….

You need to read up, wiki is linked on the top of the page.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Roll_for_Initiative as stated i have acknowledge i made a mistake about that. All the responses to this thread are thieves upset about the issues of their classes being braught up. Initiative needs a rework.

If you can’t even get something so simple correct, do you think that you could be mistaken with all your other assumptions about thieves as well? For instance, how do you figure a PW thief has “vast amount of teleports and stealth” to use in order to recover initiative and prevent you from wailing on him? A PW thief using withdraw has ZERO stealth on that weapon set, and if you use any weapon skills other than auto attack, you’re not recovering initiative to use for PW anymore. So that leave you with essentially 2 utilities: Blinding Powder (40s cd) and Shadow Refuge (60s cd). As for teleports, you’re basically stuck with Shadowstep (50s cd) since Infiltrator signet requires a target and gets you wailed on some more. I would hardly call 3 utilities on long cooldowns “vast amount of teleports and stealth”. On top of that, you don’t even have room to bring Roll for Initiative anymore.

Before whining for a nerf, maybe you can try and learn a little bit more about the class first so people don’t get the wrong idea based on your mistakes.

So, this is basically just a thinly-veiled “Nerf Thieves!” thread, right?

Dee Jay.2460:

It doesn’t necessarily need a re-work.

But it only works well in weapon-sets where ALL skills find common use. Only then is there a true opportunity cost. And without it, Initiative as a resource fails.

Oh, so true.

Initiative doesn’t need a rework, period. It does need some tweaks, but the resource costs on the thief kit is perfect, where quick decisions are needed to compete against others. You have to look at the entire thief before complaining that initiative is a problem, because they are very much different from the other professions in how they sustain, spike, etc. All I see is “power block should effect initiative”, “Chill should effect initiative”, “initiative lets people spam skills, too op”, etc.

1. Initiative is the thief cooldown. If they don’t have it, they can’t use any skill. The issue isn’t power block not effecting initiative, its power block not spending the iniative on a few weapon skills which yes, is unfair but I highly doubt intentional. I believe all skills should spend their initiative the second the server tells your toon to execute that skill, so that actual interruption is rewarded. But putting our skills on cooldown and making them cost initiative? That’s far too punishing.

2. Chill effects thieves differently than others. Yes our initiative is untouched but think of what thieves require to survive. We can’t face tank or power cleanse all conditions, we have to stay mobile and evade whether it’s an actual evade or to stealth and reposition. A thief being chilled or even crippled is very dangerous for them, the only outlier is ele but that has nothing to do with thief anyways so idk why I see ele’s posting that non-sense. I guess they just want to be gods again like they were before the sweeping nerfs.

3. None of our weapon skills have low risk: high reward from spamming them, and none of them can be spammed more than a few times which has multiple risks involved. First off “spamming” means its predictable, which means you should know what skill they’re planning to use next, which means act accordingly. HS, use anything it has no evasion. PW, it’s very costly and quite easy to spot the wind-up. Shadow shot, again very costly. Shadow strike, not spammable unless you’re up against a wall but even then the torment doesn’t last long. Headshot, basically 0 dps and tosses initiative out the door so thieves don’t spam it unless they’re intentionally “t-word”ing. I could go on but the point is, none of the skills are stronger with initiative. They all have lower power coefficients or are very costly or have very low durations because of the way they activate. Initiative actually gives us far weaker skills than anyone else, it’s just we have the flexibility of using them on demand for quick decision making. I don’t think I’d at all like cooldowns on a thief because of how the class behaves, but cooldowns are still better because they all have a role and leave an actual impact when used (heavy spike, or long duration, heavy heal or condi clear, etc.)

Can we stop pointing the finger at thief? The only thing they have to their name is wvw roaming, everywhere else they are less than appreciated. Doesn’t mean they aren’t viable, but there are better options than a thief in many parts of the game so in other words, we are not OP.

I disagree only on one thing you mentioned above, Ninja, in that the thief does have two low-risk/high-reward sets: D/P and P/D. Shadow Shot is spammable with a teleport build and is pretty tanky with no real weakness due to no cooldowns on the initiative (it can apply either condi bombs or constant pressure, and those torment durations can extend beyond 12s each), and stealth/blindspam thieves have very little counterplay due to how sticky they are and how much blind access they have, with HS activating a leap for a stab, which has incredibly high coefficients. This allows for the thief to play safely while revealed via blinds.

That said, initiative doesn’t need a rework, and cooldowns being added to thief skills are totally unnecessary and as mentioned, would require a lot of skill coefficient buffs or trait buffs to compensate.

If thieves had 1 hp then they would be balanced. But having spammable skills, being able to catch up to any fleeing class and being able to reset fights is not balanced.

Dear OP

Kukchi.6173:

Seeing how you play mostly warrior and very little of the other classes your opinion is very biased and unwelcome.

Thank you and have a nice day.

Ihales.3820:

Dear OP

Kukchi.6173:

Seeing how you play mostly warrior and very little of the other classes your opinion is very biased and unwelcome.

Thank you and have a nice day.

I actually have a thief, I think this class needs a fix. Seeing how you are very short sighted and know very little of the other classes your opinion is very biased and unwelcome.

It looks like the OP doesn’t know much about the thief class. You say you have a thief, either you’re lying or it’s a lvl 2 thief with 3 hours spent on it.

Honestly I’ve heard the “I play a thief so it needs fix” argument too many times, people need some more originality coming up with arguments for thief nerfs.

alchemyst.2165:

It looks like the OP doesn’t know much about the thief class. You say you have a thief, either you’re lying or it’s a lvl 2 thief with 3 hours spent on it.

Honestly I’ve heard the “I play a thief so it needs fix” argument too many times, people need some more originality coming up with arguments for thief nerfs.

Seems to me People who hate the truth only hear hate when the truth is spoken. I have played my thief for over 200 hours i will even provide a screenshot of my character for the non believers. I am pointing our fundamental flaws in this class and i am tired of all those cheese thieves with no skill abusing their spammable skills. http://i62.tinypic.com/2ujku4w.jpg Here is proof that I thief.

Nurf warrior.

Proof.

Ghostwolf.9863:

Nurf warrior.

Proof.

No valid argument. This thread is about thieves not warriors. Please leave this thread with your troll arguments.

Kukchi.6173:

alchemyst.2165:

It looks like the OP doesn’t know much about the thief class. You say you have a thief, either you’re lying or it’s a lvl 2 thief with 3 hours spent on it.

Honestly I’ve heard the “I play a thief so it needs fix” argument too many times, people need some more originality coming up with arguments for thief nerfs.

Seems to me People who hate the truth only hear hate when the truth is spoken. I have played my thief for over 200 hours i will even provide a screenshot of my character for the non believers. I am pointing our fundamental flaws in this class and i am tired of all those cheese thieves with no skill abusing their spammable skills. http://i62.tinypic.com/2ujku4w.jpg Here is proof that I thief.

Credibility isn’t necessary when there’s an encompassing logically sound argument being presented. Initiative is not flawed simply because it doesn’t offer an overall advantage to the thief. It simply complements the play style of having to quickly react and predict your opposition’s decisions .

You’ll notice that a thief uses significantly less weapon skills 2 thru 4 over time than all other profs, even if they wanted to use more they can’t. At this level of design that is the main balancing factor. Any perceived problems with the thief are lower level concepts that should be dealt with on a per skill/trait basis.

Shockwave.1230:

Kukchi.6173:

alchemyst.2165:

It looks like the OP doesn’t know much about the thief class. You say you have a thief, either you’re lying or it’s a lvl 2 thief with 3 hours spent on it.

Honestly I’ve heard the “I play a thief so it needs fix” argument too many times, people need some more originality coming up with arguments for thief nerfs.

Seems to me People who hate the truth only hear hate when the truth is spoken. I have played my thief for over 200 hours i will even provide a screenshot of my character for the non believers. I am pointing our fundamental flaws in this class and i am tired of all those cheese thieves with no skill abusing their spammable skills. http://i62.tinypic.com/2ujku4w.jpg Here is proof that I thief.

Credibility isn’t necessary when there’s an encompassing logically sound argument being presented. Initiative is not flawed simply because it doesn’t offer an overall advantage to the thief. It simply complements the play style of having to quickly react and predict your opposition’s decisions .

You’ll notice that a thief can use significantly less weapon skills 2 thru 4 over time than all other profs. At this level of design that is the main balancing factor. Any perceived problems with the thief are lower level concepts that should be dealt with on a per skill/trait basis.

increasing initiative cost on skills is a good way to start. Increasing the cooldown on some utilities and reducing the teleport range of some skills might offer some balance.

Kukchi.6173:

Shockwave.1230:

Kukchi.6173:

alchemyst.2165:

It looks like the OP doesn’t know much about the thief class. You say you have a thief, either you’re lying or it’s a lvl 2 thief with 3 hours spent on it.

Honestly I’ve heard the “I play a thief so it needs fix” argument too many times, people need some more originality coming up with arguments for thief nerfs.

Seems to me People who hate the truth only hear hate when the truth is spoken. I have played my thief for over 200 hours i will even provide a screenshot of my character for the non believers. I am pointing our fundamental flaws in this class and i am tired of all those cheese thieves with no skill abusing their spammable skills. http://i62.tinypic.com/2ujku4w.jpg Here is proof that I thief.

Credibility isn’t necessary when there’s an encompassing logically sound argument being presented. Initiative is not flawed simply because it doesn’t offer an overall advantage to the thief. It simply complements the play style of having to quickly react and predict your opposition’s decisions .

You’ll notice that a thief can use significantly less weapon skills 2 thru 4 over time than all other profs. At this level of design that is the main balancing factor. Any perceived problems with the thief are lower level concepts that should be dealt with on a per skill/trait basis.

increasing initiative cost on skills is a good way to start. Increasing the cooldown on some utilities and reducing the teleport range of some skills might offer some balance.

You should challenge yourself to play some pvp at a high tier with multiple meta thief builds. This will help you understand if and where those suggestions are necessary.

Kukchi.6173 i saw you called troll to someone in the past messages . . .

I just had to click into your message history to see that . . .

. . . you are just another warrior defender that disguise as a thief . . .

Don’t you see how pathetic looks to us that a WARRIOR come and ask to nerf again the most nerfed profession in the game?

You will never see this days a high skilled player complain about thieves . . . . NEVER.

If you have problems to deal with them, go to thief forum and ask for advice, as i did when Engineers, warriors and Mesmer killed me in 1 second.

For last . . . if you keep creating this kind of threads . . toxic ones. . . . no one will take you seriously . . . i invite you to see yourself your message history . . . is kind of overwhelming.

Kukchi.6173:

alchemyst.2165:

It looks like the OP doesn’t know much about the thief class. You say you have a thief, either you’re lying or it’s a lvl 2 thief with 3 hours spent on it.

Honestly I’ve heard the “I play a thief so it needs fix” argument too many times, people need some more originality coming up with arguments for thief nerfs.

Seems to me People who hate the truth only hear hate when the truth is spoken. I have played my thief for over 200 hours i will even provide a screenshot of my character for the non believers. I am pointing our fundamental flaws in this class and i am tired of all those cheese thieves with no skill abusing their spammable skills. http://i62.tinypic.com/2ujku4w.jpg Here is proof that I thief.

Tbh 283 hours isn’t that much time spent on a class to have that much experience on it. To fully understand a class I believe you need much more.

Even if you do thief in pvp, you have to understand that with thief there’s a wall of bricks, thief is outstanding against newer/noob/unskilled players, but not so much on experienced players. If you’re heartseeker spamming, or GETTING heartseeker spammed and dying then obviously theres something wrong skill wise.

I’m not saying what I want to hear, this is simply the truth.

Kukchi.6173:

Ghostwolf.9863:

Nurf warrior.

Proof.

No valid argument. This thread is about thieves not warriors. Please leave this thread with your troll arguments.

This thread is a troll. You main a warrior. Unless you are literally using your face to play you should have zero problems with a thief.