Guild Wars 2

As I said, I play both Mesmer and Thief often. I win the majority of the time against a a d/p or s/d thief.

Power Block doesn’t need a crutch aimed specifically at thieves. It’s not worthy of a GM skill anyway imo. ( though I love that it is similar to some gw1 Mesmer abilities).

My points are two fold: Thieves are underpowered already and don’t need another nerf and building around power block is, shall we say? Less than optimal for any sort of PvP anyway.

I’d recommend that the OP change to a better build.

Ithilwen.1529:

If by “subtle” you mean “works occasionally in specific circumstances” perhaps. I doubt that it is an oversight. Power Block was introduced then almost immediately nerfed.

I think it’s deliberate and appropriate. A power blocked thief would almost certainly die rapidly without a reasonable chance to defend herself.

The funny thing is that some people assume that it is intended to not work on Thieves. There is nothing deliberate about it but most Thieves are too scared they might have a harder time facing certain Mesmer builds if ANet actually looked into it.

First, ANet quite certainly didn’t intend it not to work against Thieves. It just happened to turn out that way after they changed it not to affect rezzes and stomps (which is totally fine by most Mesmers) and they didn’t care to invest any more time into it. Of course, they probably won’t every publicly say so.

Second, no Thief will automatically die if, for example, one skill goes on cooldown for 5s. Not a moderately skilled one at least. I really don’t get all the fuzz about this. Nobody is asking for an anti-Thief trait. People just want it to work. It’s silly to have one class being excluded from a trait. Everyone saying otherwise is in serious denial. There is no skill or trait in the game which deliberately makes an exception for any class.

Ithilwen.1529:

Power Block doesn’t need a crutch aimed specifically at thieves. It’s not worthy of a GM skill anyway imo. ( though I love that it is similar to some gw1 Mesmer abilities).

There is no crutch aiming at anyone. People just got the desire to get the trait working because it isn’t a valid choice over CS or CI when not affecting a class which is very likely to directly face off against a Mesmer in PvP.

Ithilwen.1529:

My points are two fold: Thieves are underpowered already and don’t need another nerf and building around power block is, shall we say? Less than optimal for any sort of PvP anyway.

So are Mesmers. The people defending the fact that PB is not working against Thieves forget that Mesmers can instead run CS or CI which work against Thieves anyway. Their effects are different but ultimatively have the same outcome – shutting down a player. Thieves don’t really have much to lose when also being affected by PB. Basically, Mesmers are just asking for build diversity. Not for nerfing Thieves.

Ithilwen.1529:

As I said, I play both Mesmer and Thief often. I win the majority of the time against a a d/p or s/d thief.

Power Block doesn’t need a crutch aimed specifically at thieves. It’s not worthy of a GM skill anyway imo. ( though I love that it is similar to some gw1 Mesmer abilities).

My points are two fold: Thieves are underpowered already and don’t need another nerf and building around power block is, shall we say? Less than optimal for any sort of PvP anyway.

I’d recommend that the OP change to a better build.

Um… I play MtD Shatter. Doesn’t affect me, don’t know why you would assume from anything I said that I’d be using Power Block. Said time and time again: This is not about thieves. This is about Power Block.

And this isn’t really a crutch aimed at thieves. It’s just that it was aimed at everything but thieves before, now I just want it all to be clean and even. Plus, thieves aren’t going to be completely locked down. 1 skill will have a 5 second cool down. 5 seconds. 1 skill. out of 9 other skills the thief has to use, I don’t think it’ll be that big of a deal, it’s not like we’re asking thieves to have CD’s on all their weapon skills, or that thief skills have a 5 second CD on normal interrupts, or that thieves actually lose the initiative on interrupted skills, or that more thief skills become interruptible.

This change asks nothing, I believe, unreasonable or substantially OP. Your argument that “it’ll still be UP” doesn’t really give reason not to change it, correct me if I’m wrong. Also, the fact that thieves have been nerfed a lot doesn’t change a thing. If thieves are underpowered, ask for buffs or changes, don’t drag other changes down.

Thus, there is no reason to not implement this change to Power Block. Correct me if I’m wrong, of course.

Ithilwen.1529:

The funny thing is that some people assume that it is intended to not work on Thieves. There is nothing deliberate about it but most Thieves are too scared they might have a harder time facing certain Mesmer builds if ANet actually looked into it.

First, ANet quite certainly didn’t intend it not to work against Thieves. It just happened to turn out that way after they changed it not to affect rezzes and stomps (which is totally fine by most Mesmers) and they didn’t care to invest any more time into it. Of course, they probably won’t every publicly say so.

Sorry man, but you’re completely wrong.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-April-15-2014/first#post3957343

• Power Block: Fixed an issue that caused this trait to set skills with zero recharge on 10 second recharge; namely auto-attacks from creatures and players, as well as thief initiative abilities. This trait will no longer trigger through stun immunity effects such as Stability and Defiance.
  —-

ANet actually has stated that Power Block is working as intended on thieves. This thread is not a bug-fix request, this is a Power Block rework/buff request.

With that said I would like to once again re-iterate what I have posted, a page or two back in this thread:

Thief weapon skills are, essentially, immune to skill interruptions of every kind. They can be interrupted, but there is no penalty for it: no loss of initiative, no cooldown of any kind. There are exceptions, but for all practical purposes the only exception to this rule is Heartseeker (aka 222222).

For years, ANet has nerfed thieves in many different ways but never introduced a punishment for their skills being interrupted. I believe the Thief initiative system is easily misunderstood by other classes and it seems as if the thief simply uses whatever skills he wants when he wants to use them, but this isn’t the case – and ANet clearly has concern for the balance of Thieves when it comes to initiative, cooldowns, and interrupts.

The proposal to change Power Block to make Thief skills go on a 5 second cooldown when interrupted would create the precise situation for thieves that the developers intentionally disallowed since the beginning of the game. The fact that Thief skills didn’t go on the 5 second cooldown for any reason (before Power Block was even in the game to be complained about) is testament to the fact that the developers believed the situation where a Thief’s weapon skills were locked out for 5 seconds (or any amount of time) after being interrupted to be unfair for the Thief.

The next step others have taken is to propose a penalty to initiative instead of a cooldown – but the fairness of this can also be inferred from the way Thieves already work. There are no penalties to initiative, either (again with the exception of Heartseeker). So it was also deemed unfair for a thief to lose initiative when his abilities are interrupted.

Finally, some say that the whole point of Power Block is to exacerbate the penalty for being interrupted. True – but we see, that with the exception of Heartseeker, there is no penalty to exacerbate, leaving the only potential option being inventing a new kind of penalty.

There probably is an option for how power block might effect Thief weapon skill in a balanced way, but the initiative system has already been sensitively balanced. It’s complicated, hard to quantify, and for right now it works. There’s really no reason for ANet to try mess with that balance for the sake of Power Block.

Many traits are poor choices against certain builds / professions or simply poor choices in general. Power Block is a poor choice against Thieves in the current meta. Back when people used Hide in Shadows more often, it would have been a decent choice – probably never a great choice. But, compared to some other Grandmaster traits Power Block is in relatively great shape in that it has any use whatsoever.

echo.2053:

Gabriell.4856:

Lets start off with 10 sec CD on DE shall we?

im game !!!!

In exchange for that cd on de, reveal will be extended to 10 secs.

Rofl. Yeah, because Mesmers with no icd DE (cough: endurance :/ ) are having such a great time vs thieves as it is now -_-u

Power Block should never have been nerfed to the bone. Mesmers are counted hard by thieves, and this gave mesmers the chance to fight back, but the QQ was real.

Clearly all these who QQ I advise you to see this piece of art.
L2P………………………………………L2PL2PL2P………………….L2PL2PL2P
L2P………………………………..L2PL2PL2PL2PL2P……………….L2P……L2PL2P
L2P…………………………….L2P…………….L2PL2P………………L2P……………L2P
L2P…………………………………………………..L2PL2P……………L2P……L2PL2P
L2P………………………………………………L2PL2P………………L2PL2PL2P
L2P…………………………………………L2PL2P……………………L2P
L2P……………………………………..L2PL2PL2PL2P……………….L2P
L2PL2PL2PL2P…………………L2PL2PL2PL2PL2PL2P…………….L2P

morbidillusion.2759:

• Power Block: Fixed an issue that caused this trait to set skills with zero recharge on 10 second recharge; namely auto-attacks from creatures and players, as well as thief initiative abilities. This trait will no longer trigger through stun immunity effects such as Stability and Defiance.
  —-

ANet actually has stated that Power Block is working as intended on thieves. This thread is not a bug-fix request, this is a Power Block rework/buff request.

I think you screwed up the quote a little bit.

There is a big difference between what they say to be intended and how it was actually intended to work by its design. The whole paragraph shows exactly what other people have been saying: That the change to the effect on Thieves is most likely a side product caused by the fix to stomps and rezzes. This doesn’t automatically mean they intend it to work out that way. Assuming this and leaving all reason aside is like assuming that the class descriptions on the official site hold true. Which they don’t.

Just look at Chill. They didn’t intend it to not work on Thieves. They just didn’t find a reasonable work-around. They even somewhat admitted it. So it is considered ‘working as intended’ although it really isn’t. Samge goes for Moa vs. Minion Masters. It is not intended but considered ‘working as intended’. Yadda yadda.

You really don’t have to rehash the whole thread to me. I’m quite capable of reading. I’m also not intrested in recaps and victimization of Thieves. Most classes have been nerfed in different ways. So this definitely isn’t an argument when discussing a trait which quite obviously wasn’t implemented properly since it doesn’t affect a whole class.

If you believe that a Thieves initiative skills should be immune to interrupt cooldowns that is a fair point I can understand although I disagree. However, there absolutely is no reason why this means that they should be immune to a specific trait or skill. ANet should have found a different way to influence Thieves.

Unfortunately the discussion always comes back to Thieves stating they shouldn’t be affected at all because they don’t like anything people come up with or due to some other pretentious reasons. We are far from having a constructive discussions if the only thing Thief mains come up with is ‘Nah, can’t be bothered. I have been nerfed in the past so get lost.’

Ross Biddle.2367:

echo.2053:

Gabriell.4856:

Lets start off with 10 sec CD on DE shall we?

im game !!!!

In exchange for that cd on de, reveal will be extended to 10 secs.

Rofl. Yeah, because Mesmers with no icd DE (cough: endurance :/ ) are having such a great time vs thieves as it is now -_-u

XD it was a joke with semi seriousness though. Its amusing no teef would be willing to take that hit EVEN though mesmers would be hit harder with that change. lol I still remember the dead sea that was created from the tears when reveal went from 3 secs to 4.

morbidillusion.2759:

But, compared to some other Grandmaster traits Power Block is in relatively great shape in that it has any use whatsoever.

wow do you even mesmer brah? 4 gm traits ( maybe 5 if you can do mantra) have use, cs has medium use the rest of them including the now nerfed pb are garbage that wont see that daylight outside maybe trolling hotjoin.

why take pb → when you can take cs and randomly proc stun 50% of the time → then again why why risk a 50% chance when you can proc 100% immobile + random condi-— oh wait teefs aren’t affected by chill …

The purpose of PB was to widen the gap between classes where other classes perform the role better and to reduce the self punishment. Why take an interrupt mesmer when an untraited hammer warrior can perform the same role but has better survivability, same cd’s as a traited interrupt mesmer, and doesn’t have damage reduced if the oppnent isn’t attacking? i guess im just spoiled from gw1 where interrupt mesmers had a purpose :/

morbidillusion.2759:

For years, ANet has nerfed thieves in many different ways but never introduced a punishment for their skills being interrupted. I believe the Thief initiative system is easily misunderstood by other classes and it seems as if the thief simply uses whatever skills he wants when he wants to use them, but this isn’t the case – and ANet clearly has concern for the balance of Thieves when it comes to initiative, cooldowns, and

For me it seems like many thief players try to defend their position through argument “it is a way how it work now, thus should work all time”. It’s not a correct ground to base on. Correct base is balance, build, playstyle diversity, etc. I admit that better to keep current thief playstyle (flexibility through global weapon CD) if u don’t like 5sec cd on 1 weap. skill. But interrupt with PB should punish more. Ini eating (-2 or -3) or other effect (0.5s knockback all classes, etc) should be there. It is not lockdown vs thief. It is PB vs other classes and thief esp.

I think they actually changed it because I remember having my bp be put on a 10s cd before

I know thieves think that they know all about how their class should work or whatever, but do you guys realize how short a 5 sec cd is and do you also realize how many of your weapons skills are easily punishable? You have literally 4 moves that have more than 3/4 of a second of cast time and one of them you start while stealthed. Interrupting anything that takes less than 3/4 of a second to cast is either amazing reflexes or pure luck. Either of which will not happen 100% of the time, and both should be rewarded because of how it’s next to impossible to do consistently. Especially in a pvp setting that isn’t 1v1. You can say PB shouldn’t work the way we want it to, that’s fine. Trying to play the victim like thieves would be instantly kitten by this into inferiority isn’t going to fool anyone though. We’ve all seen nerfs, so just because your profession has been nerfed doesn’t mean that it takes precedence over the concerns of ours.

I think the bigger conversation is not just about Mesmer’s power block not affecting thieves (and future Revenants), but it’s about should ANY class’s GM trait skills be completely invulnerable against one or more classes, and Anet needs to answer this in HOT expansion.