Guild Wars 2

Can you change “2” seconds of swiftness to “2” seconds of vigor instead?

Thieves already have 25% Passive Movement Speed Signet, this means the trait only gives the thief 2 seconds of 8% movement speed buff, very low for a 5 point trait. (All thieves use this signet, its almost stupid not too since it adds so much for 1 utility slot.)

If the trait was Vigor instead, it would add some regeneration to our endurance and stack with other Vigor traits and give us more options for more builds.

I don’t use SoS. Most PvPers don’t use SoS – its passive is ok, its activated is meh. It’s not bad persay, it just gets outshone by more useful utilities for most builds.

Well, Vigor would help every thief, whilst swiftness is ..well.. not very helpful for anyone who uses SoS.

I mean, its not like you would even have to even change the name of the trait or anything.

Vigor on Heal, Vigor on Steal, Swiftness on Dodge – no need for SoS.

I like the swiftness. Like evilapprentice, and many other players I’m sure, I do not use Signet of Shadows. The swiftness on dodge benefits plenty of people, not to mention that Vigor on every dodge might be too strong since it would significantly increase the frequency of dodging.

2 Seconds of Swiftness on Dodge is almost nothing, since for that “2” seconds, the 1 second we are dodging, so we can’t even control our character for that second.

2 Seconds of Vigor makes much more sense, since we are getting what we spent back in tiny bits.

Remember, its “2” seconds still.

To be honest, since its very little, why not add 2 seconds of Vigor and Swiftness?

Vigor on Dodge would be awesome, I looked for a way to have vigor more reliably but I couldn’t find a reliable way to keep it up. I can understand why we don’t see vigor on this though, caltrops on dodge would be just that much better… On the other hand we are very squishy and could defiantly benefit from this, definite improvement in PvE, may be considered OP in PvP.

I only run SoS if I’m not Acrobatics or traveling.

Blood~

No. It would makenthieves too dodgy cuz 10 points more and you hve 40% or so reduced dodge cost.

and what if I don’t want to slot Signet of Shadows? having easy access to a little swiftness is very helpful in that case.

You don’t understand, currently the trait is useless to thieves who use SoS, its 8% Movement Speed increase for about 0.8 seconds, because in the 1.2 seconds of the 2 seconds of the swiftness, you are dodging.

If it was 2 seconds of Vigor, the trait would work for all thief builds, not just the current FEW they already have.

Honestly, 2 seconds of vigor overpowered? Engineers can get 100% Vigor Forever.

2 seconds of vigor is nothing, it just restores a little bit of vigor back to the thief, it would make putting 5 points in acrobatics more useful.

A: comparing a thief to another class in terms of one singular skill and not taking into account everything else it has is short sighted.

B: as it is you have a choice in terms of shoring up holes in your builds, if you’ve got no acro traited SoS is a good way of getting more movement speed, also adding more reliable vigor would mean more procs of uncatchable which would be a minor buff to the move based LDB build.

The mobility is better than vigor “imho” but that’s not to say one is preferable to the other

If the trait gave you Vigor instead of Swiftness you’d probably have perma Vigor if you put 15 points into Acrobatics. No please.

i’d like to see retaliation instead,i use speed signet too,and that trait it’s so useless (for me)

You can already get perma vigor with that trait anyways, so putting vigor into that would be wasted points.

Thief can already get Perma Vigor/Swiftness.

Daecollo.9578:

You don’t understand, currently the trait is useless to thieves who use SoS, its 8% Movement Speed increase for about 0.8 seconds, because in the 1.2 seconds of the 2 seconds of the swiftness, you are dodging.

Definitely not useless, especially if you’re chasing/being chased by someone using swiftness. Besides, in a dodge-heavy build the current trait allows you to stop using SoS due to the high availability of swiftness. SoS is a crutch in most cases anyways, most thieves don’t effectively leverage it in combat enough to make it a worthwhile, but it is a great choice for laziness.

I’m not in favor of the change in the OP though, and not because I think it’d be a nerf. On the contrary, vigor-on-dodge would be ridiculously overpowered when paired with the acrobatics tree, Orrian Truffle Stew, and Unchatchable. You’d be able to easily keep >100 % uptime on vigor (continuously building more seconds of it), nearly chain-dodge forever, building multiple might stacks a second and dropping caltrops everywhere (healing you if you’ve got SoM, even).

As much as I want vigor to be more accessible for a thief, it’d be broken in this case.

You can already get 100% Vigor, even without wasting all those points/food slot, and no, even with 100% Vigor, you can’t chain dodge forever.

2 Seconds of Vigor is alot better then swiftness if you use SoS, currently 2 seconds of swiftness doesn’t do much for most thieves because of SoS. (2 seconds of vigor IS NOT overpowered.) infact it makes more sense then swiftness.

Daecollo.9578:

You can already get 100% Vigor, even without wasting all those points/food slot, and no, even with 100% Vigor, you can’t chain dodge forever.

Requiring you to chain burn your heal skill and go deep into Trickery is a whole different level of effort than simply continuing to dodge because the vigor is built-in to your dodges.

You don’t need to chain dodge forever, but as the gaps between dodges shrink the easier it is to fill them with evades, and the gaps are very small with (possibly traited) Signet of Agility, food, vigor, and acrobatics.

Tulisin.6945:

Daecollo.9578:

You can already get 100% Vigor, even without wasting all those points/food slot, and no, even with 100% Vigor, you can’t chain dodge forever.

Requiring you to chain burn your heal skill and go deep into Trickery is a whole different level of effort than simply continuing to dodge because the vigor is built-in to your dodges.

Requiring you to WASTE a food slot, and going deep into vitality for infinite vigor your way is useless as well.

I’m interested into how you get infinite vigor without wasting those things.

Also you might be able to non-stop dodge when in combination with SB’s 3… Not effective for actually fighting, but just sayin’

Daecollo.9578:

Tulisin.6945:

Daecollo.9578:

You can already get 100% Vigor, even without wasting all those points/food slot, and no, even with 100% Vigor, you can’t chain dodge forever.

Requiring you to chain burn your heal skill and go deep into Trickery is a whole different level of effort than simply continuing to dodge because the vigor is built-in to your dodges.

Requiring you to WASTE a food slot, and going deep into vitality for infinite vigor your way is useless as well.

Pretty sure +70-175 power/condition damage and +40 % endurance regen is far above the average for food power, far from wasted.

Alright, you get the 10 seconds you get from healing. (15 second CD.) I use the evade heal, because it just seems alot better then signet of malice.

So thats 10 seconds of Vigor, add 30 points in vitality, or even 20.

Thats 12 seconds.

Add Bountiful Theft, thats 15 when you steal, since you have 20 points in vitality, thats 18 seconds.

18+12 = 30 seconds, 20 pts in trickery will make stealth a 48 second CD.

Therefore, constantly healing/using steal (which I always do.) makes Vigor Permament.

I sacrifice a bit of damage to do this, but its 40 pts.

Endurance Regeneration caps at 100%. (I think.)

ANOTHER trick to get perma swiftness.

You can get Runes of the Centaur, make it where you heal and get swiftness, with boon duration this goes up, and with current dodge to get 2s of swiftness, you can get swiftness up to a full one minute duration by constantly healing yourself and rolling. (which you always do in combat anyways.)

I call it: The Monkey.

Daecollo.9578:

I sacrifice a bit of damage to do this, but its 40 pts.

It isn’t about what you personally sacrifice, but rather the level of effort required to attain a given effect. “Being able to do X with 5 trait points would be fine because we can already do that with 40 trait points” doesn’t make any sense.

This is a bit OT but, does the orrian and meat stew stack with the trait for might on dodge. As in 2 stacks per dodge?

I would rather the trait be something usable by every thief to max efficiency, the fact that one thief GREATLY benefits while the next thief does not for a common trait most thieves take greatly annoys me.

Paranoid.9542:

This is a bit OT but, does the orrian and meat stew stack with the trait for might on dodge. As in 2 stacks per dodge?

Yes it does, and even without vigor you can triple dodge→agility→triple dodge for a quick 10-12 stacks and 6 caltrops fields.

Erm, I thought the caltrops goes away when you dodge again.

Daecollo.9578:

I would rather the trait be something usable by every thief to max efficiency, the fact that one thief GREATLY benefits while the next thief does not for a common trait most thieves take greatly annoys me.

Vigor on dodge doesn’t solve this “problem” any more than the current state. Not all thieves spam dodge all the time, and vigor does absolutely nothing if you’re sitting at 100 % endurance. In fact, vigor would be a nerf to some high acrobatics builds that need to stay under 100 % endurance for their damage boost but didn’t take might-on-dodge to offset the DPS downtime when dodging without cause.

Swiftness, on the other hand, benefits you whenever you are moving, even if you go the lazy way and take SoS.

Tulisin.6945:

Yes it does, and even without vigor you can triple dodge->agility->triple dodge for a quick 10-12 stacks and 6 caltrops fields.

Yeah I’m usually at 7-9 during fights because of might on stealth and dodge. Using this could probably get me closer to 13-15 (or more) constantly… Veggie pizza’s might have some competition…

Daecollo.9578:

Erm, I thought the caltrops goes away when you dodge again.

Unless this has recently changed, this has not been my experience. Dropping 2-4 caltrops fields on a group of enemies and having Signet of Malice up has been a great way to heal up.

Daecollo.9578:

Well at least we are learning from each other.

Seems like it’s mostly me learning, but yeah.

On topic, swiftness seems like it’s a “Low tier” boon (thrown around like candy), so having it on a 5 point minor trait seems fair enough, where as vigor seems like it’s a fairly high tier boon, like fury/aegis.

Giving access to it on something as simple as dodge for 5 trait points seem against it’s nature. If it was, say, the 3rd minor trait I could maybe understand.

IMO anyways.

Thieves should have more access to fury for pistols.

Honestly, they need to also add a bleeding trait for criticals for them as well.

I thought SoS pretty much dropped off during combat anyway? I certainly feel slower when I start fighting something than when I’m just running around the world.

Foosnark.1784:

I thought SoS pretty much dropped off during combat anyway? I certainly feel slower when I start fighting something than when I’m just running around the world.

The relative movement speed boost is still 25 %, your base movement speed out of combat is just much higher (or your combat move speed is lower, if you’re glass-half-empty).

Speed buffs don’t stack, swiftness replaces SoS.

Vigour, and then the next trait that refunds some energy when you dodge. I’ve heard of facerolling around a map but I’m pretty sure that’s not what they mean.

Vigor is available already. Even 100% uptime vigor. Vigor is greater than swiftness. The trait is fine. Swiftness is greater than SoS. If you have this trait and SoS, maybe consider dropping SoS? That would mean your minor 5 point trait is giving you a free’d up skill slot. That sounds very potent imo, why are we complaining about a useful trait?

Centaur runes + SoM traited is ridiculous already for swiftness though. You can aoe perma swiftness. It’s nice if you roam with a small group. Any of the -on-heal traits/effects are crazy good if you take SoM. Especially if you have other stealth sources.

I don’t think that the SoM heal on attack triggers any of the -on-heal traits/effects. At least they don’t trigger for me. It only triggers when you hit the signet for the big heal.

Unless I’m doing it wrong, which would be awesome…

Blood~

Or change it so that it gives 2 seconds of Swiftness at the end of the dodge roll.

@Bloodgruve

He’s referring to the fact that traited SoM has a very short cooldown allowing you to activate it often, not the passive effect.

I see, thank you Tulisin. I don’t use SoM but I may try it in a vigor build.

No, no no no. With this trait an Thrill of the Crime, I can get 100% swiftness uptime. That lets me replace SoS with something far better, which is almost every skill. SoS is boring; you just leave it passive 100% of the time for the runspeed.

@Dacromir – SoS can be effectively leveraged to make it useful in combat, instantaneous AE ranged blind is fairly powerful and the skill has solid synergy with traits like Signets of Power. It isn’t a bad skill, it is just that most thieves use it for convenience and don’t get much out of it.

Signet of Agility is one of the thief’s most powerful utilities when properly synergized, but you could just as easily make the assertion that it is boring and replaceable if all you ever do is leave it up for some bonus precision.

I don’t really understand why any one would not slot in SoS. It seems as mandatory as shortbow for thieves.

For close combat brawls/duels and dungeon runs I could see SoS not being useful. But for WvW it is a must. Can also be quite important in sPVP in reaching objectives faster. Not to mention it saves a lot of travel time in the PVE world.

2 seconds of swiftness from dodging is really nothing. I barely notice it. The only time I spam dodge for the swiftness is when I’m using it and infiltrator arrow for out running the enemy or supply runs.

Azure Prower.8701:

I don’t really understand why any one would not slot in SoS. It seems as mandatory as shortbow for thieves.

For close combat brawls/duels and dungeon runs I could see SoS not being useful. But for WvW it is a must. Can also be quite important in sPVP in reaching objectives faster. Not to mention it saves a lot of travel time in the PVE world.

2 seconds of swiftness from dodging is really nothing. I barely notice it. The only time I spam dodge for the swiftness is when I’m using it and infiltrator arrow for out running the enemy or supply runs.

There’s nothing wrong with using it to travel long distances, just treat it as something like a mount and stop using it when you actually want to fight. 2s swiftness on dodge isn’t a lot, but between being able to burst swiftness and use thieves’ natural mobility you have all the tools you need to dictate range in the vast majority of situations, especially if you can cripple as well. SoS isn’t helping you once you’ve attained the range you want to be at. For me this usually means melee range, which can be closed to with IF/steal/etc and maintained with cripple.

SoS is a crutch that people learn from using it in PvE for >50 levels because, honestly, open-world PvE is so easy and involves so much travel that just slotting SoS all the time is probably optimal.

Like I said above, I’m guilty of using it when I want to be lazy, especially in PvE, but I constantly see advice to newer thieves indicating that they should become reliant on this ability when it isn’t all that necessary and can actually be harmful.

Tulisin.6945:

@Bloodgruve

He’s referring to the fact that traited SoM has a very short cooldown allowing you to activate it often, not the passive effect.

Yep, this. Traited, SoM only has a 12 second cooldown. I use it in one of my specs for insane initiative return. Gives + 6 initiative every 12 seconds by using it. I tie in the on heal vigor, and maintain nearly 100% vigor uptime too. Since it gets the returned endurance on dodge, and always has vigor, I can generally chain dodge roughly every 2-3 seconds at the minimum, so can nearly keep up swiftness 100% with this method alone. (It is a very evasive spec, in case it wasn’t obvious)