Guild Wars 2

Something just occurred to me.
We know that Chill causes 66% movement and cooldown speed reduction, which is pretty powerful.

However, Thieves don’t have cool downs on their weapons because of Initiative, so doesn’t this give their weapon skills immunity to that part of the condition?

So shouldn’t they get some sort of penalty instead, like a reduction on Initiative gain?

Discuss.

IMO its not that big of a deal. Most chill skills are on such a low duration anywas. e.g. 2s chill – who cares about a 1s increased cooldown duration? What makes Chill so valuable is the movement reduction, not cooldown speed reduction.

But you’re right, thief is immun to this single effect. But other professions also bypass core mechanics, e.g. Mesmer/Ranger deal damage from stealth through illusions/pets without being revealed.

They don’t have it implemented afaik, but 66% reduction on initiative regeneration is more powerful than 66% slower cooldowns. On the other hand chill is already really strong against thieves.
This change could lead to more “balanced” game but fighting thief with some chill would be piece of cake. Their movement is their only defense outside of stealth so it would either mean more stealth → more annoying, less tpvp viable or just overall less viable class.

Ihales.3820:

They don’t have it implemented afaik, but 66% reduction on initiative regeneration is more powerful than 66% slower cooldowns. On the other hand chill is already really strong against thieves.
This change could lead to more “balanced” game but fighting thief with some chill would be piece of cake. Their movement is their only defense outside of stealth so it would either mean more stealth -> more annoying, less tpvp viable or just overall less viable class.

How do you figure that a reduction on initiative regen (which was more what I was mawing after) would be more powerful the it is on cooldown?
Esp since the Thief has multiple means to gain Initiative directly, which cannot be said of cooldown.

Yoh.8469:

Esp since the Thief has multiple means to gain Initiative directly, which cannot be said of cooldown.

Weaponswap?

teg.1340:

IMO its not that big of a deal. Most chill skills are on such a low duration anywas. e.g. 2s chill – who cares about a 1s increased cooldown duration? What makes Chill so valuable is the movement reduction, not cooldown speed reduction.

But you’re right, thief is immun to this single effect. But other professions also bypass core mechanics, e.g. Mesmer/Ranger deal damage from stealth through illusions/pets without being revealed.

It Is a big deal.Chill can be stacked for longer than 2s..And when you are about to die dat 1s matters..Pets cant target-hit inv players..Only when they become visible again they regain aggro..

The condition has 2 negative effects and no matter how weak you think it is its unfair for a prof to bypass it…But i geuss you and a lot of devs are playing thief so its not a big deal……..

+1
It’s known for a long time that thieves are semi-immune to chill, this need a fix.

But I would advise changing the thread title to [Thief] coz its a thief bug not a chill bug.

because: a)weapon swap (you can even count underwater skills, but yeah underwater combat…) b)reduced initiative regeneration = increased “cooldown” on all skills not only on those used.

yes, it should affect thief initiative regen, but it should not be -66%
-33% is where I would start

Dardamaniac.1295:

The condition has 2 negative effects and no matter how weak you think it is its unfair for a prof to bypass it…But i geuss you and a lot of devs are playing thief so its not a big deal……..

I play thief and I also play classes with good access to chill (ele, engi). I never had a single moment where I killed someone with chill because of the increased cooldown. And I also never had a single moment where I died due to the increased cooldown of chill.

I’ve died due to the increased cooldown from chill
my condition cleanse is 2 seconds away from being off cooldown, but I’m chilled, so that turns into 6, so it never comes, because I die

Ihales.3820:

because: a)weapon swap (you can even count underwater skills, but yeah underwater combat…) b)reduced initiative regeneration = increased “cooldown” on all skills not only on those used.

a) Still chilled
b) Because its not like all of your skills dont have any cooldown expect said initiative and you can spam a single skill 3 times in a row without cooldown…. right no need for a condition which has one main thing going for it, increasing the reduced risk window between skills, to work on that… totally balanced for everyone else…

reikken.4961:

I’ve died due to the increased cooldown from chill
my condition cleanse is 2 seconds away from being off cooldown, but I’m chilled, so that turns into 6, so it never comes, because I die

I bet without chill you would have died anyways.

nah I would have been gold
the cleanse in question was ether renewal

Actually the way Chill works is that it adds 66% to cooldowns. So 2 seconds take 3.32 seconds to recharge. In other words, in 3.32 seconds your skills lose 2 seconds of cooldown which is about 40% less.

oh ok. that explains why it’s an infrequent occurrence

thieves are already penalized
- while being chilled it is almost impossible to land backstab
- chill reduces travel distance of spells like HS by a lot, you won’t be able to land it on anyone unless target stands still
- every prof is CD based, once i used up all CDs i can switch weapon and have more CDs up; if i used up ini as a thief, switching weapon won’t do anything as i still don’t have enough ini to do anything meaningful with that weapon

honestly, stop crying for thief nerfs, they are already the beaten horse of the past half year

Andele.1306:

Ihales.3820:

because: a)weapon swap (you can even count underwater skills, but yeah underwater combat…) b)reduced initiative regeneration = increased “cooldown” on all skills not only on those used.

a) Still chilled
b) Because its not like all of your skills dont have any cooldown expect said initiative and you can spam a single skill 3 times in a row without cooldown…. right no need for a condition which has one main thing going for it, increasing the reduced risk window between skills, to work on that… totally balanced for everyone else…

a) You missed the point. If any other class is chilled they can still swap weapons and have a bunch of fresh skills to use until other skills are off chilled cooldown. A thief cannot do that since all of their skills are tied to initiative. If you are all about making it fair then make sure you also campaign for a separate initiative bars for each weapon swap

b) There is a tradeoff for using 3 of the same skills in a row and that is that we can then no longer use any #2-#5 weapon skill on both weapon sets. Other players can do #2-#5 swap and do #2-#5. So normal players can drop 8 attacks(some way more) where a thief can drop 3-5.

Initiative is a terrible mechanic for balancing. It has a great upfront burst but it’s sustain is terrible, if you make the sustain good then the burst needs nerfed. A thief at base regen and post burst(3-4 attacks) can special attack once every 3-6 seconds(call it 4.5 avg), if you apply chill that’s 1 attack every 5-10 seconds(7.5 avg). Now for other classes the average cooldown is ~15 seconds. If each attack takes 1 second to perform and you have 8 attacks that is 1 attack every 1.875 seconds, chilled that’s 1 attack every 3.113. So lets get this straight, thief initiative regen is ALREADY at chilled levels. There is some more variables that can be applied to this(initiative traits/signets and cooldown traits), but I am not doing spreadsheets just to further prove it.

You want to apply chilled to thief initiative to be fair, that’s fine. But then thief initiative needs buffed to be equal to other classes attacks per second, basically double what initiative regen is currently.

Cynz.9437:

thieves are already penalized
- while being chilled it is almost impossible to land backstab
- chill reduces travel distance of spells like HS by a lot, you won’t be able to land it on anyone unless target stands still
- every prof is CD based, once i used up all CDs i can switch weapon and have more CDs up; if i used up ini as a thief, switching weapon won’t do anything as i still don’t have enough ini to do anything meaningful with that weapon

honestly, stop crying for thief nerfs, they are already the beaten horse of the past half year

I’m not, I just thought it was an oddity worth discussing.
I honestly don’t care either way.

Yoh.8469:

Something just occurred to me.
We know that Chill causes 66% movement and cooldown speed reduction, which is pretty powerful.

However, Thieves don’t have cool downs on their weapons because of Initiative, so doesn’t this give their weapon skills immunity to that part of the condition?

So shouldn’t they get some sort of penalty instead, like a reduction on Initiative gain?

Discuss.

Anet devs have said time and time before that ‘initiative is the same as cooldowns’

Anet already knows this.
They just want Thieves immune to this condition.

teg.1340:

IMO its not that big of a deal. Most chill skills are on such a low duration anywas. e.g. 2s chill – who cares about a 1s increased cooldown duration? What makes Chill so valuable is the movement reduction, not cooldown speed reduction.

But you’re right, thief is immun to this single effect. But other professions also bypass core mechanics, e.g. Mesmer/Ranger deal damage from stealth through illusions/pets without being revealed.

Chill effecting CD’s is the most potent feature. I have a mesmer build that has 6s chills. One on heal 10s cd, 1 on each weapon swap 10s cd. 1/3 chance of chill on interrupt, and 5% chance of chill on hit.

Chill is nasty on casters, especially mesmers. It will effectively shut them down. Yes, some mesmer builds get a ton of dps from their phantasms, but replacing those phantasms, or just evading/blocking/stealthing/surviving comes from weapon/util CD’s. If a skill has not refreshed when it auto to have, the mesmer’s a sitting duck. Chill wrecks mesmers, and a 6s chill forces anyone to cleanse immediately (cept maybe a warrior who just ignores it and spams auto).