Guild Wars 2

Due to the way Initiative works, weapon swapping on Thieves is incredibly lack-luster relative to other professions.
I have a very simple request to remedy this; either make Quick Pockets baseline so we gain some Initiative on swap to use the skills of that weapon, or cut the base recharge on weapon swap in half so we can swap more easily without having to commit so hard to that particular weapon.
Since we gain no Initiative right now on swap, unlike other professions we cannot swap to the other weapon to use extra skills. They all pull from the same source. Our ONLY real reason to swap weapons then is for niche usage of particular skills, like swapping over to a shortbow to Cluster Bomb some Mesmer clones.
The problem then is the 10 second recharge blocking you from switching back to your main weapon for a fair length of time.
Overall, it drastically reduces the Thief’s versatility relative to the other professions.
We either need to be able to swap over to continue attacking like other professions, or we need to be able to easily swap back and forth for usage of niche skills as the situation demands.
The downsides of swapping weapons on a Thief right now are so harsh, most people very rarely even do it.

STOP SPAMMING HEARTSEEKER THEN IN PVP, IT’S SO ANNOYING!

Just kidding. I guess 3-5 Initiative wouldn’t hurt, right?

The way it works right now feels like an Engineer without any Kits.

I’m not too keen on moving a Grandmaster trait to be an inherent ability that allows someone to run D/P + D/P and get initiative even easier.

Da Sonic.6521:

I’m not too keen on moving a Grandmaster trait to be an inherent ability that allows someone to run D/P + D/P and get initiative even easier.

Would you be in support of the recharge reduction then? That’s what I’d personally prefer anyway.
Regardless of which change were made, Quick Pockets would still need to be replaced.

Perhaps changing or adding a trait to include endurance on weapon swap could fix this problem. That would be “Thief” like, a welcomed and reasonable fix for Thieves, as well as not being too ground breaking for anyone else.

Since thief skills use initiative instead, what if weapon swapping also cost initiative? Then thieves could decide if it’s worth trading off fewer skills in a rotation to use the second weapon set. It would also prevent thieves from gaining a huge advantage over the other classes, in terms of sigils with on-swap benefits.

No doubt other changes to initiative would also have to be made, in terms of traits, costs, and so on.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Since thief skills use initiative instead, what if weapon swapping also cost initiative? Then thieves could decide if it’s worth trading off fewer skills in a rotation to use the second weapon set. It would also prevent thieves from gaining a huge advantage over the other classes, in terms of sigils with on-swap benefits.

No doubt other changes to initiative would also have to be made, in terms of traits, costs, and so on.

On Swap sigils already have a recharge on their effect, and it wouldn’t be imbalanced even if a Thief could swap freely, considering Engineers can swap kits freely AND do not share resources between them.
If there were no recharge at all, but it cost like 1 Initiative to do, I don’t think that would be too bad. Much better than what we have now at least.
Maybe the Quick Pockets Grandmaster trait could then just remove the Initiative cost of swapping.

I’ve played a thief since launch and couldn’t disagree more with this (no offense). Our initiative system is unique because it allows us to have no cooldowns on individual skills but initiative management is what separates a good thief from a (insert FoTM skill here) spamming thief. With your idea any thief could have two d/d weapon sets and just switch weapons for even more hs spam (or two s/d for even more fs/ls). You have to consider the initiative system to be a global cooldown system.