Guild Wars 2

5) It hinders counter-play.
The Thief’s attacks are completely un-predictable, outside of just how few options are available to us. If you dodge a Cloak and Dagger or a Headshot, it can just be used again immediately after at the expense of another attack.
You can whittle down their Initiative and reduce their offense, but you can’t prevent them from interrupting your heal or escaping in stealth. If it fails once, just do it again then wait for your Initiative to come back before pressing the attack.

6) It promotes bad play.
The sole purpose of Initiative is to allow you to use the same skill back-to-back, but this is mostly a very bad thing to do. Like spamming Heartseeker.
Not an overpowered tactic like many less observant players believe. Just stupid and cheesy, and more often than not will get you killed.
It’s like playing a Fighter game and just spamming low kicks over and over. You’ll only win if the other player sucks, but everyone will hate you for being so lame.

7) The game was not built around being able to spam attacks.
Say for example you go to hit Heartseeker, but you slip up and accidentally double or triple tap it in a blink. Your character will still queue up and blow your Initiative on 2-3 Heartseekers back-to-back without you being able to stop it outside something like a weapon swap or dodge roll. If even that, because a Leap (ala Heartseeker) cannot be canceled mid-way!

8) Attacks are weak.
Much like Initiative traits being terrible because you can stack them, attacks are weak because you can spam them. By extension, this actually forces you to spam attacks to an extent in order to put out any kind of damage. Or just load the unholy hell out of pure offensive stats and use gimmicks to stay alive, like Stealing in and killing them before they can effectively react (and subsequently one-shot your glass behind).

I argued the same way over a year ago and the points remain largely the same.

TL,DR is many Thief builds evolve around 1 key skill and Initiative allows us to spam that skill over and over again.

Now that’s still true to an extent.

However two things have altered my view on this topic:

1. Cooldowns aren’t much better. You think Initiative is bad? Well at least it involves some sort of resource management all other classes lack. There’s a reason why most MMOs have at least 2 mechanic to limit skill use, typically cooldowns and mana. Cooldowns alone make for extremely shallow game-play, which is what Guild Wars 2 has. Playing a class, using all the skills, switching weapons, using all those, switching back again etc. may look more interesting in fights but is hardly more engaging.

2. Dagger/Pistol – D/P is really the only weapon-set in which Initiative succeeds as a resource. This is because, unlike with most other weapon sets, ALL D/P skills are useful. Each fulfills a particular role and they are expensive enough to require some form of Initiative management. Yes, it could be harder to more in-depth, but considering how shallow cooldown management is it doesn’t have to be.

What this has taught me though is that Initiative as a resource is not to blame. It’s the poorly designed skills that don’t synergize at all with certain builds. If D/D had more than #2 and #5 to use I’m sure Initiative would be much less controversial. If P/D was about more than just #5 and #1 (with the random #3 tossed in for lolz) it too would be much more engaging.

So the key to fixing Initiative doesn’t rely on the resource itself, but in giving players more interesting ways to use it so that there’s more of a trade-off involved.

I actually see the ‘counterpoints’ as what makes Initiative great for playing as a thief. A thief is not merely a warrior with a tiny weapon.

If fighting a thief feels really cheap and cheesy, then Mission Accomplished. They’re not supposed to fight ‘fair’, and, if they try, they end up sucking for it.

They use actual dirty play and guile to get an edge over opponents, instead of using honorable fair play and standard combat abilities given stealth-themed names and particle effects.

Then give everyone initiative (or something like it).

It is WAY more fun to use a global cooldown than the current cooldown system. The cooldown system every other profession has encourages rotations which has to be the most brainless method of attack in existence.

It forces players to manage what they have available in real time where every attack makes every other attack less available. It forces players to fully commit rather than “LETS SEA WUT AHTACK IZ OF CULDOWN”.

Zacchary.6183:

Then give everyone initiative (or something like it).

It is WAY more fun to use a global cooldown than the current cooldown system. The cooldown system every other profession has encourages rotations which has to be the most brainless method of attack in existence.

It forces players to manage what they have available in real time where every attack makes every other attack less available. It forces players to fully commit rather than “LETS SEA WUT AHTACK IZ OF CULDOWN”.

necro skills should all consume life when you use them, unless they’re deathshroud skills, in which case they consume lifeforce. GONNA SPAM ME SOME REAPER’S MARK

Am I alone in thinking Initiative is an interesting mechanic? And I don’t even have a Thief but hey, good for them that they have a global pool of shared cooldowns.

Carighan.6758:

Am I alone in thinking Initiative is an interesting mechanic? And I don’t even have a Thief but hey, good for them that they have a global pool of shared cooldowns.

I like initiative. It’s not perfectly done, but it’s still pretty fun and different.

Carighan.6758:

Am I alone in thinking Initiative is an interesting mechanic? And I don’t even have a Thief but hey, good for them that they have a global pool of shared cooldowns.

Not alone, you’ll just find supporters don’t feel a need to defend it on the forums. There’s a few who speak up on the forums about the merits of what’s already in game in an attempt to balance out forum inevitable negativity, which happens because it’s the best outlet people have.

Sarrs.4831:

Zacchary.6183:

Then give everyone initiative (or something like it).

It is WAY more fun to use a global cooldown than the current cooldown system. The cooldown system every other profession has encourages rotations which has to be the most brainless method of attack in existence.

It forces players to manage what they have available in real time where every attack makes every other attack less available. It forces players to fully commit rather than “LETS SEA WUT AHTACK IZ OF CULDOWN”.

necro skills should all consume life when you use them, unless they’re deathshroud skills, in which case they consume lifeforce. GONNA SPAM ME SOME REAPER’S MARK

The kicker here is you can only spam so much. Once you run out of resources you are reduced to auto attacks.

yolo swaggins.2570:

Sarrs.4831:

Zacchary.6183:

Then give everyone initiative (or something like it).

It is WAY more fun to use a global cooldown than the current cooldown system. The cooldown system every other profession has encourages rotations which has to be the most brainless method of attack in existence.

It forces players to manage what they have available in real time where every attack makes every other attack less available. It forces players to fully commit rather than “LETS SEA WUT AHTACK IZ OF CULDOWN”.

necro skills should all consume life when you use them, unless they’re deathshroud skills, in which case they consume lifeforce. GONNA SPAM ME SOME REAPER’S MARK

The kicker here is you can only spam so much. Once you run out of resources you are reduced to auto attacks.

Once you run out of resources you DIE.

Good point lol!

It’d be kinda cool if someone could refute the issues I’ve addressed with it, instead of just saying “I like the style.”
Because that doesn’t change the fact its ridiculously broken.

Grimwolf.7163:

It’d be kinda cool if someone could refute the issues I’ve addressed with it, instead of just saying “I like the style.”
Because that doesn’t change the fact its ridiculously broken.

Initiative is not broken. It’s just different. If you want a quantified refute, here’s one I’ve done before.

Over 60 seconds a thief has 72 initiative to use on weapon skills. On average it’s about 4 initiative per skills 2-4. Which means you can use about 18 2-4 skills over 1 minute. Any other profession has weapon swaps, death shroud, attunement, kits, etc. For weapon skills 2-4 and they all use recharge. Every profession can use 2 times as many skills as a thief over 60 seconds.

What this clearly shows is that every other prof has the 2-4 skills more readily available than the thief, this shows that ever other profession is broken compared to the thief when you look at weapon skill usage based on resource available within a silo.

Grimwolf.7163:

It’d be kinda cool if someone could refute the issues I’ve addressed with it, instead of just saying “I like the style.”
Because that doesn’t change the fact its ridiculously broken.

Well re-read my post.

Initiative is broken because most weapon-sets only use 2 skills that consume Initiative. When you only have two ways to spend it of course it gets spammy.

Initiative works much better when you have 4 skills to use it on, all with their own niche and purpose. Then it actually becomes a good mechanic. But thus far this only applies to D/P.

Grimwolf.7163:

1) Here’s a biggie that gets on everyone’s nerves; it lets us spam stealth skills back-to-back.

True, but only up to a certain point. Seasoned Thieves knows that Initiative needs to be managed tactically. Unlike the cooldown skills, Thieves need to make a decision every time on how they’re going to spend their initiative. Cooldowns are for mindless game play while Initiatives always keeps us on our toes. Sure spamming a single skill is easy, just like activating every skill that is out of cooldown, but those rarely wins any fight.

The initiative cost of stealth skill is too great that it’s hardly worth it to use back-to-back and if this is used to troll, then what else can you do? Punish legitimate players so that trolls can no longer troll? We both know that’s a very bad idea.

2) We have far fewer offensive options than other classes.

Not true. You only really run out of offensive options if you fail to manage your initiatives. At maximum possible pool, we have 15 initiatives and for that single pool, our offensive capability can be of any combinations that can be executed every 15s (base init regen). Compare to a cooldown weapon set, once you used your skill combination, you cannot use that combination again for a very long time since a lot of skills have 20s-forty five sec cooldown — locking a skill in cooldown diminishes the offensive option of those weapon skills.

3) Chill does not affect us properly.

I’m not really sure that this is really a problem because Chill still affects our heal, utility, and elite skills. Hindering the Thief’s movement is more devastating for a Thief compare to other professions.

4) Our traits suck.

Valid point. No argument there.

Although I disagree that “1 Initiative every 10 seconds, which is equivalent to a 10% increase in attack frequency” because there’s no Thief skill that costs only 1-initiative. The cheapest weapon skill costs 3-init so basically it’s more like 3.33% increase.

5) It hinders counter-play. The Thief’s attacks are completely un-predictable, outside of just how few options are available to us. If you dodge a Cloak and Dagger or a Headshot, it can just be used again immediately after at the expense of another attack.

Initiative is doing exactly what it’s designed to do, to dominate the first half of any fight. The counter-play happens after the Thief used up all their initiatives and the “now my turn” moment begins. Unfortunately, very few takes advantage of that opportunity and the blame goes to the Thief.

Of course, seasoned Thieves will try to prevent this counter play by using their own counters like blinds, daze, evade, and stealth — but the counter play is there and other profession have successfully countered Thief’s counters to their counter play.

6) It promotes bad play.

You can’t really solve that issue since even the cooldowns promotes bad play. For instance, Balance Stance, ’zerker stance, and “Stand your Ground!” are on a long cooldown but are lame skills that is impossible to interrupt and makes them nigh-invincible.

What’s the counter play on ’zerker stance? None. In GW1, we can break the stances, but not in this game.

These skills also promotes bad play since all the Warrior and Guardian do is mindless use all their weapon skills that is out of cooldown.

The only real option Thieves have in this situation is to escape either by Shadowstep or Stealth.

7) The game was not built around being able to spam attacks.

On the contrary, GW2 was built around being able to spam attacks. Back in beta, all profession follows the GW1 model of having energy and there’s even potions in game that you can use to replenish your resources. Then before open beta, they scrapped the idea and gave everyone cooldown skills except for Thieves.

As for multiple activation of skills like Heartseeker, that has more to do with client-server communication than the actual skill itself. Most MMO solved this issue by introducing global cooldowns to hide the server lag. Perhaps Thieves should have one just to prevent the skill for being over used — however, that will anger a lot of players who play Thief because this is more like a player issue. Over time, after playing Thief many times, I’ve never over used a skill anymore like I used to in the past — just like other seasoned players.

8) Attacks are weak.

I totally disagree. The only reason attacks are weak because many Thieves uses only one skill, like you said, spamming the same skill back to back. But when the skills are used as a combination, the attacks are stronger and meaningful. It is apparent that Thieves rewards the worthy and punishes the unworthy.

Just like in an FPS game, spray-and-pray is weak when using an automatic rifle, but to the seasoned player, that rifle is strong when used properly.

I love Initiative. All classes should use weapon skills in this manner, rebalanced to work with the use of 2 weapon sets and simply renamed to something like Energy, sort of like GW1 and early GW2 but one step further.

I agree with Sir Vincent and Shockwave

Initiative is fine and work how it should.
Furthermore, the most points, which the OP wrote, have nothing to do with Initiative.
They are the result of not well thought through decisions (and the thief is full of them.)
That’s why the thief have weak skills/traits and not because of Initiative.

Auesis.7301:

I love Initiative. All classes should use weapon skills in this manner, rebalanced to work with the use of 2 weapon sets and simply renamed to something like Energy, sort of like GW1 and early GW2 but one step further.

I belive that is no good idea.
CD’s are the only reason, why the other classes can’t spam one KD, fears, or aoes after another.

But maybe for GW3 ^^

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Assassin

Bring that back.

Carighan.6758:

Am I alone in thinking Initiative is an interesting mechanic? And I don’t even have a Thief but hey, good for them that they have a global pool of shared cooldowns.

No it’s like energy from GW1.,which was a very interesting mechanic. The difference I’d make is to give all thief skills short CDs as well (even as short as 1-2s) just like Assassins had in GW1. In the absence of interrupts this would make zero difference to Thief DPS but it would have two key side effects:

1. Interrupts would now place thief skills on CD – currently only really heart seeker can be put on CD.
2. It would no longer be possible to spam skills from stealth in order to bypass aegis

I regard this as a bug fix not a nerf. Thief players will disagree, but I think anet will find it much easier to tune the power of various thief skills and they may now be able to buff some of the weaker talents without fear of them becoming too strong.

Grimwolf.7163:

It’d be kinda cool if someone could refute the issues I’ve addressed with it, instead of just saying “I like the style.”
Because that doesn’t change the fact its ridiculously broken.

Yes but this is a RPG. A game played for character progression, immersion and roleplaying, not for perfect pro-gamer balance like genres such as MOBAs or many team-FPS.

“It feels fitting” is a solid explanation to keep it, in a RPG.
Would you have a Paladin class (called a Paladin, too!) without plate armour, just because it was unbalanced? Probably not. :P

Neurophen.9738:

Carighan.6758:

Am I alone in thinking Initiative is an interesting mechanic? And I don’t even have a Thief but hey, good for them that they have a global pool of shared cooldowns.

No it’s like energy from GW1.,which was a very interesting mechanic. The difference I’d make is to give all thief skills short CDs as well (even as short as 1-2s) just like Assassins had in GW1. In the absence of interrupts this would make zero difference to Thief DPS but it would have two key side effects:

1. Interrupts would now place thief skills on CD – currently only really heart seeker can be put on CD.
2. It would no longer be possible to spam skills from stealth in order to bypass aegis

I regard this as a bug fix not a nerf. Thief players will disagree, but I think anet will find it much easier to tune the power of various thief skills and they may now be able to buff some of the weaker talents without fear of them becoming too strong.

Seriously though, if you don’t play a Thief and have no idea on how the changes you want to make will affect the Thief’s game play, please keep your suggestion to yourself. Thank you.

I do have a theif and I extensively played assassin in gw1. Did you?

Neurophen.9738:

I do have a theif and I extensively played assassin in gw1. Did you?

So why are you so clueless?

Anyone can claim to have played Assassin and Thief, but your shallow understanding of the professions will always show on your posts.

Have a fun time playing other professions. Thank you.

Could you please explain why putting a low cool down on skills (basically the time taken to activate plus after cast) would be so bad? I suspect you can’t but if you can I’m all ears and would happily admit it if you can demonstrate a flaw with my reasoning.

The core of what I want to change is making counterplay viable vs thieves just like it is vs evey other class. Do you disagree with that goal?

Neurophen.9738:

Could you please explain why putting a low cool down on skills (basically the time taken to activate plus after cast) would be so bad? I suspect you can’t but if you can I’m all ears and would happily admit it if you can demonstrate a flaw with my reasoning.

You have not explain why it is good in the first place.

Your reasoning is short sighted and not well thought of without considerations on other parts of the game outside your tunnel vision that is PvP.

You also did not consider that Anet is doing away with splitting PvE and PvP therefore any changes that they do in favor of PvP will greatly affect those who are in PvE and WvW.

I could go on, but I think you get the picture.

The core of what I want to change is making counterplay viable vs thieves just like it is vs evey other class. Do you disagree with that goal?

It’s so obvious that you don’t play a Thief, or at least spend enough time to play one. So undeniably obvious.

Let me point out I am NOT asking for a DPS nerf of any shape or form. I’m asking for a bug fix to bring thieves inline with other classes, and enable a skilled player to punish a careless or less skilled player.

Please explain how this would detrimentally affect other game modes with examples. Please don’t reply with ad hominems.

on the pro-initiative side. the more diverse the play-style between classes, the better. setting up a system that promotes resource management to the tune of a potentially high-risk/high-reward burst style is good…….it’s the particulars of some skills and the access to extreme stealth/not enough access to counter-play to stealth, that is more complaint-worthy.

that said….one-skill-spamming isn’t effective vs. decent players…….and really only done in p/p, which is the only ineffective weapon set a thief has.

My biggest problem with Initiative is how they don’t seem understand how it needs to work. P/P is the best illustration of this.

P/P’s primary source of damage is Unload, because Vital Shot is weaker/slower than it should be. What effect does this have on the set? It completely breaks it – because it puts you in a position where you’re having to overrely on Initiative for basic DPS, which in turn ruins the set’s utility and makes it feel highly one-trick pony – moderate ranged DPS with almost no mobility or utility.

If you’re going to have Initiative, the way it HAS to be designed is that the #1 skill should always be the bread and butter damage source, and the #2 – 5 skills need to offer various utility and/or light supplemental damage that DOES NOT offer huge benefits for spamming. The problem is that the skills just aren’t balanced well for it. They also need to fix the queuing.

Initiative is not a good replacement for recharges, but that doesn’t mean it should be removed.

It’s should not be one or another. It should be both.

Recharges are just needed to limit and complement initiative, much like GW1’s skill had recharges on top of energy costs.

Thief weapon skills don’t need long recharges like 10-50 seconds, but recharges in weapon skills must not be taken out of the table for them.

Recharges would open the possibility of adjusting recharges for better and more adjusted balance, and new sorts of weapons that may have stronger skills, like a rifle used as a sniper rifle for long range assassinations with a long recharge in a high damage sniping skill that thieves would never be able to get otherwise, because even costing all initiative they would be able to use that too often.

0.25…5 seconds would be more than enough for some of the current thief weapon skills that would do better with a recharge, as not all of them need recharges, only some. For example, none of the sequence skills need recharges when they have slow projectiles (e.g.: Cluster Bomb) or require extra initiative (e.g.: Infiltrators Strike) that naturally slow them down.

Only skills like dual skills o black powder that are close to gamebreaking when spammed too much, or skills like Disabling Shot that will make you jump around too much if you accidentally queue one extra use, need some recharge like 0.25…5s. And in exchange they could lose part of their initiative costs, scrapping 1 point of initiative here and there as balance goes on.

Initiative is not useless. It just needs to work with recharges in some cases to work better, allowing better balance and better future changes and additions for thief weapon skills.

Einlanzer.1627:

If you’re going to have Initiative, the way it HAS to be designed is that the #1 skill should always be the bread and butter damage source, and the #2 – 5 skills need to offer various utility and/or light supplemental damage that DOES NOT offer huge benefits for spamming. The problem is that the skills just aren’t balanced well for it. They also need to fix the queuing.

Einlanzer.1627:

If you’re going to have Initiative, the way it HAS to be designed is that the #1 skill should always be the bread and butter damage source, and the #2 – 5 skills need to offer various utility and/or light supplemental damage that DOES NOT offer huge benefits for spamming. The problem is that the skills just aren’t balanced well for it. They also need to fix the queuing.

Though I agree with what you’re saying, but it’s not for this game.

Initiative is meant to be used to initiate, thus the name, meaning a lead action. If Anet will change the skills to function like what you’re suggesting, then they also need to rename it since it will no longer make sense.

Like others who have posted under this topic, it seems that many of you are not understanding what the goal of having an Initiative as a resource means.

A simple search in the Wiki will help you understand what it’s for and what’s the vision and goal concerning Initiative is all about.

So all these suggestion about having #1 as the min attack and the rest are utility doesn’t coincide with the design intent for the Thieves and all these suggestions of adding cooldown needs to understand that Thief IS NOT Assassin.

Sir Vincent, are you aware that interrupting most thief skills does virtually nothing other than cancel the cast? Unlike any other class you can’t put thief abilities on CD (in some instances they do loose initiative but not always).

Neurophen.9738:

Sir Vincent, are you aware that interrupting most thief skills does virtually nothing other than cancel the cast? Unlike any other class you can’t put thief abilities on CD (in some instances they do loose initiative but not always).

What’s that had got to do with the topic?

You’re bringing here your shortsightedness mentioning about interrupting Thief’s skills that only applies in a PvP setting. Your limited knowledge of the Thief is unbelievable. Do you even realize what a cooldown will do to Thieves in other settings of the game?

If a cooldown skill got interrupted, it only affects that specific skill. When a Thief skill got interrupted, if the initiative is lost, it affects all 4 skills and 4 other skills on all weapon sets.

Now before you reply to this, let it sink in, or play a Thief for several months.

I believe adding very short CDs will do nothing to thieves in the absence of interrupts. Feel free to list the circumstances where this is wrong. I am genuinely curious.

If it helps could you please list the encounters/mechanics where making thieves effected by interrupts would hurt them? Why is this not a problem for other classes (who do get their skills on CD)? Why is this not a L2P issue? Are you able to respond without ad hominims?

I think they’ve tried to import a mix of WoW Rogue and GW1 Assasin and skip one very major thing - Combo.

You see, everything seems cool. But imagine if in GW1 you could just ignore MH-OH-Dual rotation and just simply spam Dual. It would be hell Overpowered. That’s GW2.

Same goes for Rogue. Imagine you can just skip all those Combo Points and stuff and just spam Kidney Shot, Eviscerate or Ambush all the way. That’s GW2.

I’m not against Initiative, it’s very cool mechanic and we need more similar to that. But secondary mechanics, like Combo points or Moves were there for a reason. Currently, you can just spam your “main” ability over and over, in both mentioned games you had to actually combo it with other abilities to do something.
Bring that back and we will be okay with Thief.

I see many problems with initiative, but none of them are worthy of a total rework or make the mechanic broken or unfulfilling.

1- For starters, all 2-5 weapon skills on a thief are technically spammable, some with higher rewards than others.

2- Some weapon sets don’t have use of all those skills, so you just see the same rotation which is not all that enjoyable to use or fight against.

3- a majority of these skills have drastically reduced effects compared to other professions’ durations or power coeficients because they’re technically spammable. So unfortunately they have to suffer shorter effects and some of them aren’t suitable to the weapon set to begin with which ties to the 2nd issue. Body shot would a prime example of “wtf is this doing here?”

My problem with initiative is the mix of good and bad weapon skills having no DR. Without DR I can’t see them every buffing any of our weapon skills, or thief woulld get a bunch of op builds. I don’t have a problem with initiative as much as our weapon kits.

Neurophen.9738:

I believe adding very short CDs will do nothing to thieves in the absence of interrupts. Feel free to list the circumstances where this is wrong. I am genuinely curious.

Why don’t you do yourself a favor and make the list yourself?

1) What makes you believe that “adding very short CDs will do nothing to thieves in the absence of interrupts”? Substantiate this “belief”.
2) What are the circumstances where this is “right”? Make a list of the circumstances please.

I am genuinely curious.

If it helps could you please list the encounters/mechanics where making thieves effected by interrupts would hurt them?

What makes you believe that Thieves aren’t affected by interrupts?

There are only 5/10 skills that are tied to initiatives.

Why is this not a problem for other classes (who do get their skills on CD)?

L2R.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

If a cooldown skill got interrupted, it only affects that specific skill. When a Thief skill got interrupted, if the initiative is lost, it affects all 4 skills and 4 other skills on all weapon sets.

Why is this not a L2P issue?

Look. Take my advice before you reply.

PLAY. A. THIEF.

Thank you.

Are you able to respond without ad hominims?

Now it’s ad hom for calling you out. Seriously, play a thief first.

Sure. Most GW1 &2, skills have: activation time, after cast and cool down. The cool down and the after cast start after the skill has been cast. This means the maximum number of times that skill can be activated per second is 1 / activation time +max(after cast, cool down)

If the cooldown <= after cast then it simply would make no difference. I’m suggesting more like a 1s CD on skills (not auto attacks) surely that would be a DPS nerf? No because initiative isn’t a limitless pool you can’t just spam them endlessly. I’m suggesting the CDs would be set so that the same number of skill activations and auto attacks would happen over time.

This would in no way be a DPS nerf. Heck if it was I’d be fine increacing the damage on the individual attacks propotionally to compensate.

I hope you agree it’d possible to do this. The benefit would be that interrupts now put skills (not auto attacks) on kitten cool down just like every other class.

Neurophen.9738:

Sure. Most GW1 &2, skills have: activation time, after cast and cool down. The cool down and the after cast start after the skill has been cast. This means the maximum number of times that skill can be activated per second is 1 / activation time +max(after cast, cool down)

If the cooldown <= after cast then it simply would make no difference. I’m suggesting more like a 1s CD on skills (not auto attacks) surely that would be a DPS nerf? No because initiative isn’t a limitless pool you can’t just spam them endlessly. I’m suggesting the CDs would be set so that the same number of skill activations and auto attacks would happen over time.

This would in no way be a DPS nerf. Heck if it was I’d be fine increacing the damage on the individual attacks propotionally to compensate.

I hope you agree it’d possible to do this. The benefit would be that interrupts now put skills (not auto attacks) on kitten cool down just like every other class.

Why do this? All it would prevent is people from double tapping skills, which is necessary at times, like when you need to cluster bomb like crazy on rezers.

Shockwave.1230:

Neurophen.9738:

Sure. Most GW1 &2, skills have: activation time, after cast and cool down. The cool down and the after cast start after the skill has been cast. This means the maximum number of times that skill can be activated per second is 1 / activation time +max(after cast, cool down)

If the cooldown <= after cast then it simply would make no difference. I’m suggesting more like a 1s CD on skills (not auto attacks) surely that would be a DPS nerf? No because initiative isn’t a limitless pool you can’t just spam them endlessly. I’m suggesting the CDs would be set so that the same number of skill activations and auto attacks would happen over time.

This would in no way be a DPS nerf. Heck if it was I’d be fine increacing the damage on the individual attacks propotionally to compensate.

I hope you agree it’d possible to do this. The benefit would be that interrupts now put skills (not auto attacks) on kitten cool down just like every other class.

Why do this? All it would prevent is people from double tapping skills, which is necessary at times, like when you need to cluster bomb like crazy on rezers.

You don’t need to respond to him anymore since it so obvious he knows nothing about Thieves and doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Sartharina.3542:

I actually see the ‘counterpoints’ as what makes Initiative great for playing as a thief. A thief is not merely a warrior with a tiny weapon.

If fighting a thief feels really cheap and cheesy, then Mission Accomplished. They’re not supposed to fight ‘fair’, and, if they try, they end up sucking for it.

They use actual dirty play and guile to get an edge over opponents, instead of using honorable fair play and standard combat abilities given stealth-themed names and particle effects.

except the game is supposed to be fun.
i cant say ive ever had fun fighting a thief.
so the game is failing in that respect.
dirty play and guile dont have to be unfun for the opponent. but things like no revealed on mitigated attacks and long duration stealth make fighting a thief unfun. it makes active mitigation pointless, it means you might as well jump in place pushing about face to have a better shot at a front stab instead of a back stab.

insanemaniac.2456:

Sartharina.3542:

I actually see the ‘counterpoints’ as what makes Initiative great for playing as a thief. A thief is not merely a warrior with a tiny weapon.

If fighting a thief feels really cheap and cheesy, then Mission Accomplished. They’re not supposed to fight ‘fair’, and, if they try, they end up sucking for it.

They use actual dirty play and guile to get an edge over opponents, instead of using honorable fair play and standard combat abilities given stealth-themed names and particle effects.

except the game is supposed to be fun.
i cant say ive ever had fun fighting a thief.
so the game is failing in that respect.
dirty play and guile dont have to be unfun for the opponent. but things like no revealed on mitigated attacks and long duration stealth make fighting a thief unfun. it makes active mitigation pointless, it means you might as well jump in place pushing about face to have a better shot at a front stab instead of a back stab.

Getting told an obvious nerf is a “MASSSIVE buff” isn’t fun.
Playing with an elitist group that wipes anyways isn’t fun.
Playing with random parties period isn’t fun.
Playing musical towers in WvW isn’t fun.
Ganking players that fail to maintain situational awareness and then complain when their failure costs them another trip to the zerg isn’t fun.
Being pushed to play the meta in order to be useful isn’t fun.
Professions being pigeonholed into a DPS only meta isn’t fun.
Having 60% of all traits and utilities be either useless or extremely situational isn’t fun.
Having to hear HS spam complaints on a s/x build isn’t fun.
Having to repeat the same rebuttals against that same complaints 24/7 isn’t fun.

You know what is fun?

Knowing I am never going to be guilty of rolling my face on a keyboard because my profession doesn’t allow it is fun.
Knowing that if I get on another profession that I am going to have vastly better management of my cooldowns and timing than most of the players who don’t main my profession… which is fun.
My profession being the best looking with a buttcape on is fun.
Getting my daily self esteem boost because the numerous complaint posts I read have no basis for argument or discussion largely due to lack of experience is fun.

I’ve had fun fights with thieves because I know how they work, I know how to kill them without stealth on my thief and I know which attacks hurt them the most at the right times on my other professions.

And I, as well as several other thieves, would gladly show you if you would simply let us and stop constantly shooting down like a zealous machine gunner.

Shockwave.1230:

Neurophen.9738:

Sure. Most GW1 &2, skills have: activation time, after cast and cool down. The cool down and the after cast start after the skill has been cast. This means the maximum number of times that skill can be activated per second is 1 / activation time +max(after cast, cool down)

If the cooldown <= after cast then it simply would make no difference. I’m suggesting more like a 1s CD on skills (not auto attacks) surely that would be a DPS nerf? No because initiative isn’t a limitless pool you can’t just spam them endlessly. I’m suggesting the CDs would be set so that the same number of skill activations and auto attacks would happen over time.

This would in no way be a DPS nerf. Heck if it was I’d be fine increacing the damage on the individual attacks propotionally to compensate.

I hope you agree it’d possible to do this. The benefit would be that interrupts now put skills (not auto attacks) on kitten cool down just like every other class.

Why do this? All it would prevent is people from double tapping skills, which is necessary at times, like when you need to cluster bomb like crazy on rezers.

It would fix the anomaly of thief skills not going on cool down when interrupted.

We tried to explain why initiative was a terrible system in beta and it fell on deaf ears. There are just too many problems with it that it will never be balanced, especially with the speed that ArenaNet does class balance.

I mean there is sustained dmg vs burst dmg where if you balance for one the other suffers. That has huge implications in build variety and PvE vs PvP balance. Then of course you have the issue with spammable abilities, they obviously have to be balanced much differently than ones based on cooldown alone. Obviously spammable abilities can’t have the impact of say a 40s cooldown ability since max initiative would leave them at ~12s. That obviously leads to the number of abilities a class can use at the start of a fight. With 2 weapon sets on most classes you can obviously use 10 abilities before really waiting on cooldowns, a thief can use 3-4.

The whole system is a big catch 22. Impact has to be low because abilities are spammable, but since they can only use 3-4 they need to have more impact. Too much initiative regen and burst is too high but too low and sustained damage is bad. It will never be fixed.

If they needed to keep initiative I would have liked them to apply it to utilities/elite instead and given the weapon sets normal cooldowns.

Zacchary.6183:

insanemaniac.2456:

Sartharina.3542:

I actually see the ‘counterpoints’ as what makes Initiative great for playing as a thief. A thief is not merely a warrior with a tiny weapon.

If fighting a thief feels really cheap and cheesy, then Mission Accomplished. They’re not supposed to fight ‘fair’, and, if they try, they end up sucking for it.

They use actual dirty play and guile to get an edge over opponents, instead of using honorable fair play and standard combat abilities given stealth-themed names and particle effects.

except the game is supposed to be fun.
i cant say ive ever had fun fighting a thief.
so the game is failing in that respect.
dirty play and guile dont have to be unfun for the opponent. but things like no revealed on mitigated attacks and long duration stealth make fighting a thief unfun. it makes active mitigation pointless, it means you might as well jump in place pushing about face to have a better shot at a front stab instead of a back stab.

Getting told an obvious nerf is a “MASSSIVE buff” isn’t fun.
Playing with an elitist group that wipes anyways isn’t fun.
Playing with random parties period isn’t fun.
Playing musical towers in WvW isn’t fun.
Ganking players that fail to maintain situational awareness and then complain when their failure costs them another trip to the zerg isn’t fun.
Being pushed to play the meta in order to be useful isn’t fun.
Professions being pigeonholed into a DPS only meta isn’t fun.
Having 60% of all traits and utilities be either useless or extremely situational isn’t fun.
Having to hear HS spam complaints on a s/x build isn’t fun.
Having to repeat the same rebuttals against that same complaints 24/7 isn’t fun.

You know what is fun?

Knowing I am never going to be guilty of rolling my face on a keyboard because my profession doesn’t allow it is fun.
Knowing that if I get on another profession that I am going to have vastly better management of my cooldowns and timing than most of the players who don’t main my profession… which is fun.
My profession being the best looking with a buttcape on is fun.
Getting my daily self esteem boost because the numerous complaint posts I read have no basis for argument or discussion largely due to lack of experience is fun.

I’ve had fun fights with thieves because I know how they work, I know how to kill them without stealth on my thief and I know which attacks hurt them the most at the right times on my other professions.

And I, as well as several other thieves, would gladly show you if you would simply let us and stop constantly shooting down like a zealous machine gunner.

the devs have very little control over how the community perceives various things, which are what most of your complaints are about: balance, elitists, pugs, and bads

the devs have a high level of control over game mechanics, which is what my complaints are about. well, and musical towers and traits.

i do know how a thief works thank you, and i can kill bad thieves just as easily as any other class. but it doesnt have to be automatically annoying to fight them for them to work. so dont go off the kittening deep end every time you see a post that says “fighting thieves sucks balls”.

That’s why I am here! To remind players that their statements can be (severely) flawed.

Annoying fights isn’t and never was exclusive to thieves. Every profession is capable of being annoying.

What is annoying is when every day there is at least 1 new topic complaining about the thief’s ability to shadowstep, stealth and evade when that is really all they can do to stay alive. It actually tops mount threads.

The way they normally OP writes their flame or their sob story or some thoroughly disguised complaint and offers a blanket nerf without recognizing the repercussions those nerfs will have on the profession. Forum guards, like myself, reply to the threads to subtley hint to OP that their plight is their fault and then receive their weekly infraction.

Now if they, you know, get some information and think about what what they want changed on the profession a little, they could easily avoid the forum guardians defensive trolling. They don’t get hurt, the forum guards don’t get defensive, the thread doesn’t get locked and nobody gets suspended.

Example….

If the OP (and other antithiefists) would have come out and said something along the lines of:

fighting thieves sucks balls because skill spam. Should fix by adding very short cooldowns on some of the skills but then increase damage/speed/conditions to compensate for the removal of spammability in proportion to the lost viability. hint hint Like so:

<insert idearrhea>

Then forum guardians like myself will come on here and reply with:

k

or provide tweaks to the ideas. But just being generally open minded and accepting of criticism at all times (both sides) can do wonders. Being coherent does wonders too.

I thought about this over the weekend and I think some of you might find this intriguing.

Introducing – “Exhaustion” mechanic

What is Exhaustion?
In GW1, Elementalist has this mechanic to allow them to use explosive spell by sacrificing portion of their energy pool and after a while, they will have less energy left if they kept on using the spell with Exhaustion.

How will Exhaustion work for Thieves?
Each of the weapon skill will have an Exhaustion timer based on the Initiative cost and Exhaustion cooldown timer twice the initiative cost. If the skill is used while Exhaustion is up, the skill will cost zero Initiative but will suffer the cooldown timer.

For example;
- Heartseeker costs 3 initiatives
- Exhaustion timer for HS will be 3s that will activate when HS is used
- If Heartseeker is used while Exhaustion is up, Heartseeker will cost zero initiative but will go in 6s cooldown

- CnD costs 6 initiatives
- Exhaustion timer for CnD will be 6s
- If CnD is used while Exhaustion is up, CnD will cost zero initiative but will go on a 12s cooldown

What will this propose change do?
This will limit the abuse on and misuse of the weapon skills but it will be little or no change to those who manages their initiatives well.

What do you guys think?

It’s an interesting thought, but the thief wasn’t balanced around this initially. It’ll take a profession revamp to implement this properly, which the thief doesn’t need.