Guild Wars 2

So I thought about this and I am curious of opinions. So I have convinced myself that thieves need the initiative mechanic. As a non thief player I thought hey maybe cooldowns would fix the problem.
But now after more brainstorming, why not have cooldowns and initiative. Something like each skill has an icd with it, but you can choose to pay initiative to take it off cd.

Would that work? Solve and problems? or just complicate the system?

That’s an interesting idea, but not sure how well it would work in actual practice.

Maybe each consecutive use of an ability increases the initiative cost? Or each use within a certain time frame? You could limit the “spamability” of certain abilities by giving them a moderate initiative cost with a heavy increase and other abilities could have low or moderate initiative cost and low to heavy increases.

I know a lot of people don’t think there’s anything wrong with the initiative mechanic, but I think it could definitely use some refining. Coupled with the lack of cooldowns on Thief abilities it makes certain specs and abilities down right ridiculous.

I think the thief is a cool concept, but imho I just think the development team did not think a person would just spam an ability. I feel like it was an oversight. When you work on something for so long you start to overlook things.

Yea I was thinking like cost maybe go up for consecutive uses.
I think the costs of things is not the issue. Just the spam ability.

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

I think the thief is a cool concept, but imho I just think the development team did not think a person would just spam an ability. I feel like it was an oversight. When you work on something for so long you start to overlook things.

Yea I was thinking like cost maybe go up for consecutive uses.
I think the costs of things is not the issue. Just the spam ability.

They obviously thought of that, the thief is just an extension of the assassin, a Guild Wars profession.

Additionally, this is just stupid. That just goes back to the old way of spending mana/energy to use skills then have a recharge time.

bacalao.2083:

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

I think the thief is a cool concept, but imho I just think the development team did not think a person would just spam an ability. I feel like it was an oversight. When you work on something for so long you start to overlook things.

Yea I was thinking like cost maybe go up for consecutive uses.
I think the costs of things is not the issue. Just the spam ability.

They obviously thought of that, the thief is just an extension of the assassin, a Guild Wars profession.

Additionally, this is just stupid. That just goes back to the old way of spending mana/energy to use skills then have a recharge time.

It is basically “the old way” in its current form. Initiative is just energy with a different name. The only difference is that Thief abilities have no cooldown associated with them.

This system would pretty much make more thieves resort to BS. The Initiative system idealy is a use as needed kind of system, which is which is why thieves have so few dps focused skills. On top of that, of their damage focused skills, Heartseekers the only one that can be spammed. Deathblossom, Unload, Pistol Whip, all can’t really be used more the 3 times before the thief is out of initiative and can’t weapon skill again for a few seconds. Sure it looks like thieves mash buttons to win, but in reality, thieves don’t have rotations like other classes so they’re pretty lacking in options for sustained dps.

I think a simpler and more effective solution would be to switch Heartseeker from a dps focused skill, to a utility focused skill. Like lower it’s base damage, raise it’s bonus damage, and make the damage bonus much more strict, like it’d only do base damage until the target is below 10% health, and perhaps raise the skill’s point cost to 4. This would theoretically make HS, weaker then auto attack when spammed before the bonus kicks in, forcing it to be used for it’s utilities. (Gap closer, Leap finisher, finishing blow)

You can only spam HS because it’s a gap closer.
Remove that and you remove the spam.

Paying Initiative to take them off cooldown? That’s essentially what the initiative resource system already does. =p

If it takes 3 initiative to use a skill and you gain 1 initiative a second (as an example) that’s essentially a 3 second cooldown.

They could instead just put actual short cooldowns on all or some abilities and still have them cost initiative. Would be just like the old GW1 style, and would probably make things alot easier to balance. For example instead of gutting Dancing Dagger dmg (which was much needed IMO) they could have added a short cooldown (3-4 seconds) instead so you couldn’t spam it back to back and instagib 2 targets.

Speaking of the Thieve’s mechanics, I actually wish the cooldown + initiative system was given to every class as well as the dual weapon skills. It would make the combat for every class much more interesting and give room for more interesting abilities or traits, as well as support abilities (give init to allies)

I honestly liked how it worked in Warhammer, every class had that energy style of resource.

Dual.8953:

I think a simpler and more effective solution would be to switch Heartseeker from a dps focused skill, to a utility focused skill. Like lower it’s base damage, raise it’s bonus damage, and make the damage bonus much more strict, like it’d only do base damage until the target is below 10% health, and perhaps raise the skill’s point cost to 4. This would theoretically make HS, weaker then auto attack when spammed before the bonus kicks in, forcing it to be used for it’s utilities. (Gap closer, Leap finisher, finishing blow)

I like this idea, but not quite as drastic as you make it. The current structure of the skill is:

100%-50%: 336
50%-25%: 504
25%-0%: 672

Why not change it to a formula:

Damage = 50 + 1000 * (1 – target health %) – 1000 * (target health %) ^ 2

Throw in a minimum of 50 damage to account for the negative damage values between around 65% and 99%. This would scale damage both in a way more forgiving to the thief (25.1% no longer triggers a full tier less than 24.9%) and forces it to only be used in low HP situations. Here’s a quick breakdown of damage by HP:

100% – 50
90% – 50
80% – 50
70 % – 50
60% – 90
50% – 300
40% – 490
30% – 660
20% – 810
10% – 940
0% – 1050

The formula is just a quick top of the head rate for demonstration, the specific numbers could be tweaked of course. This skill would do much less damage at all health levels above about 35% with increasing damage rates under that point. Of course, this sort of change might even further encourage glass cannon backstab to get the player down to low health in the first place.

Go play a thief. That’s all the advice I can give you.

After about a week or so, you’ll see that the way Anet designed every weapon combination, you have (At best) one ability designed to do damage. Everything else is a utility of some sort, with a varying degree of damage (never alot) attached to it – a cripple, a daze, a gap closer, an escape, a condition cleanse….and so on. This has never been more true than after the OH Dagger nerf.

D/D thieves spam HS because if revealed is down, their only other option is auto attack. Yes, there is of course backstab, but it requires stealth (which costs 6 init, a heal, or a utility), and positioning.
S/P thieves don’t spam much of anything, because their best DPS option is auto attack. You might see them “Spamming” infiltrators strike (as much as that ability can be spammed), because it’s a spare “oh kitten” button, and you need to keep your reurns clean. Same thing for S/D, though you could argue they spam CnD (which now does pretty awful damage for the init cost), which is the only way to access the daze the build is based on.
P/P doesn’t have a “good damage option”, but unload is the closest thing to it – good luck trying to do damage with anything else.
P/D is always stealthing because without sneak attack, the spec is basically pointless.
D/P might have had a second option. Shadow shot does slightly less damage, but it has double the range of HS, and a blind attached – it also does better damage over 50%, and (I believe) only slightly less for the 25-50% range, for only 1 more initiative. I could see tactically using Shadow shot over HS in many situations….if only Shadow shot (a gap closer), didn’t root us on hit.

If you really want a CD attached to every weapon skill, you’ll have the boost the damage of 4/5 of each weaponsets skills to balance it out.

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

So I thought about this and I am curious of opinions. So I have convinced myself that thieves need the initiative mechanic. As a non thief player I thought hey maybe cooldowns would fix the problem.
But now after more brainstorming, why not have cooldowns and initiative. Something like each skill has an icd with it, but you can choose to pay initiative to take it off cd.

Would that work? Solve and problems? or just complicate the system?

CD+Cost is nothing new for MMO’s, in GW2, you also had Mana-cost and Cooldowns, so I see no Problem with it.

I also think that the low CD of some of the Thiefs abilities are essentiel to why the Thief is so strong in PvP atm: For the amount of DMG it does, backstab, Cloak and Dagger and Heartseeker have a way too low CD: Almost any other Class that does similar DMG, like Burst-Ele or Burst-Warrior, have much higher CD’s: Flame Grab, Updraft or other Knockdowns that are essentiel for the Ele’s Combo, have 30+ Seconds CD and Bulls Charge, Frenzy etc. on the Warrior, which often are incremental to the Burst’s DPS and success, have way higher CD as well.

With those low CD’s on the Burst-Skills and the Option to go stealth very easily as Thief, it’s possible for a Thief to go Full-Burst and have no real risk or drawback to it: There isn’t a high CD, there is no Drawback like on Frenzy or other Quickness-abilities and because you can surpass the short downtime in between spikes while in stealth, you are not even open for counterattacks.

IMHO, there needs to be sth. done with the CD’s on the Thief – I don’t really care if they implement actual cooldowns on the Skills or make them have higher Ini-costs, but I do think that the main Problem of the Thief lies in this Aspect.

@PowerBottom: Okay I’m going to point this out. Adding a longer wait time isn’t going to detour Thieves from going for the BS combo, it’s already practically ok cooldowns, especially the ones that employ basalisk venom. And a change like what you’re suggesting would hurt balanced builds more then the burst builds.

Hello,

There is already a thread about the thief here: The thief and its gameplay – Your feedback, therefore this one is now locked.

Please refer to this thread for any feedback about the thief in general, so we can address your concerns & feedback to our teams.

Thank you.