Guild Wars 2

It gets me killed more than it saves me, actually I don’t think it has ever saved me.

Can we delete it? I’ll take anything.

For those that don’t know, is the 5 point minor trait in SA that auto stealth’s you at 25% HP.

It’s one of those passives that you notice always odd. They could just change it to blinding powder with no stealth. The blind is better there anyway.

It has saved my skin way more then it has killed me, no doubt about that. Think we got some mighty exageration going on here.

But it does have the problem that it can be a serious downside when it procs at the wrong time, unintentionally harming the player more then it helps.

Last Refuge is not the only of such trait, there are a bunch around across various professions. And with them being minor traits they are very hard to avoid when you have any interest in going down a certain tree.

Engineer evasive powder keg and reserve mines is also terrible. The bomb on dodge causes dodges to proc confusion, and the mines can retroactively pull the engineer out of stealth aswell, ruining a lenghty cooldown and limited access to stealth as it is.

Such traits need to, in general, be overhauled. Minor traits should never have a potential of being a serious drawback due to their forced nature.

Basicly what Terra said.

The simple solution is move it to the Major trait spot liek the mesmer version of this trait is, though exactly what you’d swapi it with I dont know. I dont know enough about thief traits and builds to know.

I agree, one should never be forced to have a trait like this.

They should just make it a major trait and swap one of the current major traits to the minor slot (i.e. shadow protector/slowed pulse). Then it’s still there if someone happens to want it, and the people that hate it don’t have it shoved down their throat and instead get something that is situationally useful but not inconvenient.

Razor.6392:

It gets me killed more than it saves me, actually I don’t think it has ever saved me.

Can we delete it? I’ll take anything.

For those that don’t know, is the 5 point minor trait in SA that auto stealth’s you at 25% HP.

It has never saved me, but killed me often. This trait needs to be balance for reveal.

I like the blind idea, something like black powder without the stealth part.

To be honest, last refuge has killed me more often than it has saved me. Furthermore, it’s quite buggy. I’ve had moments where I was brought down to 1k HP, and the trait only activated a few seconds later as I took the damage that downed me. It’s quite worthless in my opinion.

It’s also useful for an opponent as confirmation that they got you down. When they see that auto-puff go off, they know they hit you when you were low, and it can give away your position to them. If you went into shadow refuge, then get hit with something (i.e. rapid fire, general AoE), it lets the enemies know where you’re standing, or where you’re sitting if you got downed.

This trait has saved me before, but it’s killed me at least an equal number of times (i.e. going off during the casting animation of CnD). I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad trait, per se, I just think it should be optional given the nature of it.

Could you explain to a non thief how going into stealth is bad and kills you?

Lupanic.6502:

Could you explain to a non thief how going into stealth is bad and kills you?

The trait causes the utility blinding powder to be used automatically. While this might seem useful, what happens is that it occurs at a moment that you don’t expect it. This means you may be in the middle of performing some series of actions that causes you to hit something and be revealed, preventing you from going into stealth for awhile.

Normally when you use blinding powder, you are using it deliberately, and so you don’t randomly start attacking things if your intent is to stay hidden. With the automatic one from last refuge, you generally don’t plan for it to occur, and it can screw up your other plans.

The most common way it kills me is that it occurs in the middle of me casting cloak and dagger. I may be in some danger and taking damage, so I close in on a target to cloak and dagger them, which should stealth me and allow me to get away, heal, or do whatever I need to do. However, it can happen that last refuge decides to occur during the casting animation of cloak and dagger. This means last refuge stealths me, and then my cloak and dagger attack hits the enemy, causing me to be revealed. Now I am screwed because I cannot use something else to re-enter stealth. If last refuge didn’t occur, I could just have hit them with cloak and dagger and gained the stealth that I wanted.

It can also be a problem for people using projectile weapons. Last refuge can proc while a projectile is still flying through the air, causing you to be immediately revealed when it finally hits. As such, you can’t enter stealth for a little bit, even if your original plan was to do just that.

It can even screw up your steal attempts. Since stealing counts as a hit, it will reveal you if you are a stealthed. As such, if you mean to steal to an enemy thief to get the feathers item and then stealth yourself with it, your entire plan can be screwed up if last refuge procs just before you try to steal to the thief. This will cause you to be revealed, and using your feathers stolen item will be ineffective for 3-4 seconds, possibly meaning that you die instead.

Thieves using d/p often do heartseeker through black powder to gain stealth. The way this works, it allows you to actually hit the opponent with the heartseeker because the stealth is applied after the hit occurs. However, if last refuge decides to proc just as you do heartseeker, this will end up revealing you since you were stealthed before hitting the target, and you are prevented from getting the stealth that your originally wanted to get.

It’s a truly terrible and annoying trait, especially with D/D.

It has been complained about on many occasions. But like most justified complaints, it has been completely ignored by ANet.

It’s less problematic on other weapon-sets like D/P, which is why I haven’t raged about the trait in a while.

Yamsandjams.3267:

Lupanic.6502:

Could you explain to a non thief how going into stealth is bad and kills you?

-snip-

Also, as it’s blinding powder, it can stealth those around you and whatever you said screws you over, can just as easily screw over the thief next to you if it procs.

Possible solution:

Just make it so that right before blinding powder activates you teleport away and THEN blinding powder. Also make it so that it has a higher threshold (like 33%) and change it to when you REACH that threshold, not when you are struck below it.

While you’re at it, give me a choice to not take the Engie 5 point Explosives trait. God, I hate that thing.

Back on topic, it’s pretty silly to have a last ditch trait that puts you in combat eh?

I don’t see how its a problem. Don’t trait into Shadow Arts :p I don’t

Warcry.1596:

I don’t see how its a problem. Don’t trait into Shadow Arts :p I don’t

While we’re at it lets just disable any trait points from going into SA. Tell the community it’s down for maintenance.

Seriously though this trait should be reworked, have it drop a black powder shot to aoe blind and give you something to work off of. At least it would work as a defense and have literally no draw backs. Even if a trait “sometimes” gets you killed, that’s more than enough of a reason to rework it. Traits are meant to be bonuses, in no way should they have a “well if this occurs you’re SoL” moment.

From the perspective of a Mace Warrior, I hate this trait. So often I’ll stun the Thief, this will proc and I’ll down them. They’ll then shadow step and immediately use the downed state stealth. Since I lack any AoE I have to run around seeing if I get lucky and connect. They often times have enough time to actually heal up because of this or I have to spend more time that what should be necessary to finish them.

It’s a rare situation for most other classes but you REALLY should be revealed once you’re downed. I would be totally fine with it being changed though since that’s one less minor annoyance out of the way.

This skill should function like the decoy skill/desperate decoy trait mesmers have which stealths the player despite the revealed debuff.

Bacon.4918:

This skill should function like the decoy skill/desperate decoy trait mesmers have which stealths the player despite the revealed debuff.

No, you don’t understand. The problem isn’t that the thief is revealed before the trait procs, the problem is that the thief gets revealed immediately after the trait procs.

This happens with mesmers too, if they take desperate decoy. However, it’s a major trait, and so the vast majority of people never ever take it.

Bacon.4918:

This skill should function like the decoy skill/desperate decoy trait mesmers have which stealths the player despite the revealed debuff.

the problem with last refuge is that it procs at the most inconvenient times, namely when attacking. this triggers the revealed debuff because technically said thief just attacked from stealth, so it wouldn’t really fix the problem at hand.

when i first started thief this trait used to kill me all the time. it still kills me a lot. i won’t lie though it has saved me a few times, but 90% of the time it’s either a nuisance or deadly to me. i trait out of SA just because of that one trait. it sucks cause you gotta take it if you want to trait into SA. fix it plz.

EDIT: oh i got ninja’d. hi.

BurrTheKing.8571:

From the perspective of a Mace Warrior, I hate this trait. So often I’ll stun the Thief, this will proc and I’ll down them. They’ll then shadow step and immediately use the downed state stealth.

I’m not sure how this works. First of all, there’s a 7 second cooldown on the #3 skill (the stealth) when going down. The blinding powder passive provides the thief with 4 seconds of stealth (if he has atleast 15 points in SA), so there’s atleast 3 seconds he should be visible in his downed state. Moreover, the downed skill only provides 2 seconds of stealth (1 untraited). In no way should the thief have enough time to be able to revive by himself. It’s different if he managed to drop a refuge on himself before going down though.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again.

There is currently an effect in the game titled “Cloak” – Mesmers have it, and it renders you invisible even if you have the revealed debuff.

The main purpose behind the revealed timer is to stop thieves from spamming their most powerful attacks, their stealth attacks (BS, TS, etc).

Instead of having LR trigger “Stealth”, have it trigger “Cloak” – stealth attacks will not be available while cloaked, and striking a target while cloaked will not cause the revealed debuff. Whether or not the cloak effect trigger “on stealth” traits in the SA tree is a game balance decision that needs to be tested, but I don’t see why not.

There you go, LR is fixed without being OP for or against the Thief. In the middle of a CnD when LR triggers? No problem, you still get stealth. In the middle of an Unload when LR triggers? No problem, no revealed debuff for you. Get LR while standing behind your enemy? No BS for you, it’s Cloak not Stealth.

This is the perfect solution not only because it’s fair to both the thief and their opponent, but also because it should be an easy fix to implement (Cloak already exists in the game, they don’t have to code it from scratch), and because ANet has explicitly said (a few months ago in a discussion about LR where players were suggesting effects other than stealth for LR) that they want LR to remain “Stealth based”.

Note: I haven’t played in months so I might have mixed up a few names, but the information is solid (assuming nothing has changed)

It’s original design was fine before reveled was put into the game, now it just screws you more often than not. It should be changed to give something like a smoke screen @ 25% instead.

Steb.2571:

It’s original design was fine before reveled was put into the game, now it just screws you more often than not. It should be changed to give something like a smoke screen @ 25% instead.

The devs have already weighed in on this suggestion, and a 100 others – they specifically stated that they want the skill to grant stealth in some form – Not just enable stealth via combo fields.

Zero.6592:

I agree, one should never be forced to have a trait like this.

Yeah! Get rid of this pathetic trait! God forbid you actually have to be skilled enough to pay attention to your own health bar!

Chrispy.5641:

Zero.6592:

I agree, one should never be forced to have a trait like this.

Yeah! Get rid of this pathetic trait! God forbid you actually have to be skilled enough to pay attention to your own health bar!

I too advocate standing around and not using any attacks when you get low on health for the fear that a supposedly beneficial trait might hit you with 4 seconds of revealed because you continued to play the game.

Not really though, because that would be silly.