Guild Wars 2

This post is from a PvP standpoint.

Base init regen, without any traits, is in an awful place, and needs to be adjusted.

The initiative regeneration formula we currently have is from launch, when thief’s burst (and general damage) was much, much higher. Since launch, we’ve seen
- a reduction in HS’s thresholds
- a 15% damage reduction to Pistol whip and cluster bomb
- a change to Assassins Signet that reduced burst
- Mug can no longer crit
- a 33% damage reduction to Cloak and Dagger
- a 50% damage reduction to Dancing Dagger
- A reduction in haste’s attack speed boost.

And that’s just off the top of my head – I might have missed some. The point of this post isn’t to dispute whether or not those changes were justified – the point is, a thief’s TTK (time to kill) has been affected by these changes. Initiative regen, however, is where the dev’s thought it needed to be prior to all these changes.

Traited, Initiative regen can range from acceptable to amazing, but it’s boring and limiting – no other class has so many minor and major traits dedicated to using their abilities faster, and when they do opt to take one of those traits, there is an additional benefit.

My suggestion is twofold
A) Increase base initiative regen
B) Modify existing initiative based traits to be more interesting, and to balance out the increased base regen so that in the end thieves heavily traited for init regen do not gain initiative any faster than similarly traited specs do now.

It’d be interesting to see some of our traits that seem dedicated to making the class playable instead give our specs more flavor and utility, and open up the possibility of new specs (since we won’t be so heavily reliant on slotting init regen traits).

What does burst have to do with initiative regen?

No, ini regen is fine and people are used to it’s current regeneration rate. If things need balancing, you need to do it some other way.

Interceptor.2653:

What does burst have to do with initiative regen?

More damage per point of initiative spent, faster kills (which means less reaction time for your opponent to intercede with heals/dodges/blocks/etc which prolong the fight) requiring more initiative to be spent. The nerf to burst was also a nerf to damage dealt, which also results in more initiative spent to achieve the same goal.

Master of Timespace.2548:

No, ini regen is fine and people are used to it’s current regeneration rate. If things need balancing, you need to do it some other way.

So you run a spec with absolutely no initative regenerating traits? That would require you to have less than 15 points in CS, and no points in trickery (which is possible of course, just pointing it out).

People were used to HS working the way it did, and CnD, and Dancing dagger, and PW…didn’t stop them from changing it. Same for revealed timer – people were Extremely used to the 3s timer, but they still increased it to 4s because they thought it was necessary – the argument that people are used to the way things are doesn’t justify not changing something.

Additionally, init regen wouldn’t necessarily be faster – you can replace some of the minor traits with more interesting effects, resulting in specs that regen init at roughly the same pace which are just more interesting to play. You’ll note I specifically mentioned that traiting for heavy init regen in the current system would regen init at the same rate as in my supposed system with better base init regeneration – I’m looking to narrow the gap between traited and untraited and improve our traits.

Additionally, init regen wouldn’t necessarily be faster – you can replace some of the minor traits with more interesting effects, resulting in specs that regen init at roughly the same pace which are just more interesting to play. You’ll note I specifically mentioned that traiting for heavy init regen in the current system would regen init at the same rate as in my supposed system with better base init regeneration – I’m looking to narrow the gap between traited and untraited and improve our traits.

I would prefer to do it that way. Make boring traits such as patience and quick recovery more interesting and perhaps add conditional initative gain to some (minor?) traits. Of course this all should be done very carefully to avoid giving too much initative gain, making thief just another “spam everything” class.