Guild Wars 2

Since release, I and many other thieves were asking you to fix our broken trait Last Refuge.
This is probably worst trait ingame because it’s killing us and there is no way to disable it! And what you did to this trait was LOWER COOLDOWN ON IT! SERIOUSLY? SO I CAN DIE MORE OFTEN, YAY!
I play thief and i can’t understand why you ignore us for so long.
We are spamming thief subforum since 2012, and there is no answer.
I’m really tired of dying because of this kitten. Every balance patch I hope you will finally listen to us and fix it.
There were tons of suggestions on forum how you can fix it, but you just don’t apparently care.
Everytime I die because of it, it makes me more angry and I play wvw less and less.
Can any dev answer this? Will you fix it someday or killing us is working as intended?
Now there is yet another balance patch without any change. Just another 6 months waiting and dying.
I suppose I should be happy it’s not more thief nerfs, but fix the broken stuff first maybe?

Greetz
Mad d/d thief

How does it kill you?

Unless the wiki is wrong about what it does I see nothing at all in its description that would in any way or form kill you.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Last-Refuge-is-a-Death-Sentence

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Suggestion-Torment-Thieves-and-Last-Refuge

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Last-Refuge-change-it-please

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Last-Refuge-Trait-whyyy

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Will-Last-Refuge-ever-be-removed/first

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Last-Refuge-strikes-again

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Last-Refuge-Minor-Trait

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Why-Last-Refuge-is-detrimental-esports-pov

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Please-Fix-Last-Refuge

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/balance/PvX-Thief-Last-Refuge

Enjoy!

So it basically comes down to people not being able to pay attention to their health and thus uses abilities at a time where they would hurt the stealth given by the Trait? Or am I missing something?

One could of course also question if we needed yet another thread if there are so many thread already discussing it.

lordkrall.7241:

So it basically comes down to people not being able to pay attention to their health and thus uses abilities at a time where they would hurt the stealth given by the Trait? Or am I missing something?

One could of course also question if we needed yet another thread if there are so many thread already discussing it.

Or if they bottle enough tears then reveled might be limited to only skills like sick’em not only the thief attacking from stealth.

The 27th patch removes Last Refuge’s tendency to cancel skill use by changing the Blinding Powder skill itself, which fixes 1/2 of the LR problem. I’m not sure where you’re reading a ‘reduced cooldown’ thing, as the thread does not say anything about LR or its cooldown.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/preview-of-upcoming-balance-changes/

They reduced cd long time ago from 90 to 60 seconds.

They will fix this when they fix the warrior’s reckless dodge in stealth => never.

I lost the count how many times I got revealed just because I’m trying to dodge aoes and all random attacks around me. Great choice – don’t dodge and die, or dodge, get revealed and die. gg

Terissimo.6852:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Last-Refuge-is-a-Death-Sentence

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Suggestion-Torment-Thieves-and-Last-Refuge

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Last-Refuge-change-it-please

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Last-Refuge-Trait-whyyy

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Will-Last-Refuge-ever-be-removed/first

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Last-Refuge-strikes-again

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Last-Refuge-Minor-Trait

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Why-Last-Refuge-is-detrimental-esports-pov

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Please-Fix-Last-Refuge

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/balance/PvX-Thief-Last-Refuge

Enjoy!

So you really had to open another thread on this?

Wanze.8410:

Terissimo.6852:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Last-Refuge-is-a-Death-Sentence

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Suggestion-Torment-Thieves-and-Last-Refuge

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Last-Refuge-change-it-please

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Last-Refuge-Trait-whyyy

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Will-Last-Refuge-ever-be-removed/first

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Last-Refuge-strikes-again

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Last-Refuge-Minor-Trait

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Why-Last-Refuge-is-detrimental-esports-pov

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Please-Fix-Last-Refuge

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/balance/PvX-Thief-Last-Refuge

Enjoy!

So you really had to open another thread on this?

Why would he make a post in one of those threads or even another thread in that forum, if no one of Anet even looks there at all? The GW2 discussion board occasionally has people of Anet look at threads, so if he wanted to discuss something important to him, this forum would be the ideal place to do that.

But yeah, I expect this thread to be moved to the thief’s forum, by a moderator, where it will silently die.

I hate the fact that it Blinding powder will no longer intterupt!…… when I am autoattacking and want to do an backstap it will now instead reveal me on autoattacking when notmal (atm it would cencel my autoattack and makes me able to do a backstap…) there goes on fly offencive use.

-edit-
I actually like it better now.

As for last refuge I hardly ever have the problem with it. And it saves my live more times then it kills me. (3k hour thief experiance.)

If you get screwed its either bad luck or you dinnt play carefull enough.

It looks like an L2p issue to me. I never used shadow arts so I dont know how it feels like but even then if you die to this trait , you should look into your own gameplay .

glock.6590:

It looks like an L2p issue to me. I never used shadow arts so I dont know how it feels like but even then if you die to this trait , you should look into your own gameplay .

If you had actually died to this trait before, then you would know how frustrating it is. It is badly designed that can cause you to kill yourself. You shouldn’t have to monitor your health and then suddenly “stop attacking” just as you near 25% of your health just to avoid dying. Traits should not give you a death sentence.

My reasoning for not using shadow arts is solely because of this trait.

That said, I’m one who believes it would be more appropriate to allow for better condition cleansing on the class and other classes overall to negate the dependency for use of this trait/shadow arts in general.

I think the entire line is a crutch, except for the border-line mandatory Shadow’s Embrace.

glock.6590:

It looks like an L2p issue to me. I never used shadow arts so I dont know how it feels like but even then if you die to this trait , you should look into your own gameplay .

Can’t tell if that’s a troll post or not. If you ever played a D/D build that had shadow refuge you’d know that it’s not a L2P issue when you are trying to CnD for stealth only to have LR pop leaving you with a revealed debuff while you are less than 25% life. Unless you are very lucky that usually is equal to death. It’s the same with any kind of delayed damage ability. Shoot an arrow, LR pops, arrow lands, revealed debuff, death.

You know its a bad design when people are actively avoiding the whole talent tree just to avoid a first tier passive.

Terissimo.6852:

Since release, I and many other thieves were asking you to fix our broken trait Last Refuge.
This is probably worst trait ingame because it’s killing us and there is no way to disable it! And what you did to this trait was LOWER COOLDOWN ON IT! SERIOUSLY? SO I CAN DIE MORE OFTEN, YAY!
I play thief and i can’t understand why you ignore us for so long.
We are spamming thief subforum since 2012, and there is no answer.
I’m really tired of dying because of this kitten. Every balance patch I hope you will finally listen to us and fix it.
There were tons of suggestions on forum how you can fix it, but you just don’t apparently care.
Everytime I die because of it, it makes me more angry and I play wvw less and less.
Can any dev answer this? Will you fix it someday or killing us is working as intended?
Now there is yet another balance patch without any change. Just another 6 months waiting and dying.
I suppose I should be happy it’s not more thief nerfs, but fix the broken stuff first maybe?

Greetz
Mad d/d thief

I been asking for it to be fixed ever since they broke it near release with reveal… Even put it in my signature. It’s pretty sad how they ignore it. They’ve NEVER commented on it EVER. I often make builds without SA just so I don’t have to deal with it, and because I miss Assassin but thats a different story.

They did comment on it at one point when people were suggesting that they just change it to give us a protection boon for like 5 seconds that they wanted it to “thematically” still fit into the SA trait line, meaning it needed to be stealth related. It’s on the first page of this post: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/balance/PvX-Thief-Last-Refuge/first

In any case that was close to a YEAR AGO now which at this point is just getting embarrassing. Love to see it’s status on their bug tracker.

lordkrall.7241:

So it basically comes down to people not being able to pay attention to their health and thus uses abilities at a time where they would hurt the stealth given by the Trait? Or am I missing something?

Unless they introduce a visual timer for trait cooldowns, its not something you can work with. Not to mention thief is overall quite squishy so you can be 90% or higher and drop to 25% really quick and this trait does nothing to cancel your current actions such as dealing damage (which breaks stealth). That’s the problem people have with last refuge.

The trait needs to be disabled until a solution is made to fix it. No trait should have the potential to harm a player, especially not a minor trait because you can’t not choose those. Not spec’ing into SA is not a solution either, there are many valuable traits in there that get hindered by last refuge, and what kind of balance suggestion is to scratch off 20% of your trait selection?

I apologize in advance but I think I’m going to add bumping this post to my “daily”. They’ve been silent on this for over a year now, maybe if this reaches 10+ pages someone will get permission to say something.

Ppl trust me its easier just to ignore us “thiefs” than help us!It’s just the way they do “fix” things around! And more to add they are scared to make balance on Thiefs as they will die on their main Warrior Class they enjoy making it “impossible to die”… No fun after all and it was intended to destroy this class from start or at least from what i read on the evolution of patches. Very Disappointed !!! Go all and play Warrior… (excuse my english skills)

Maybe it’s because of our name change. No one will respect a “Thief.” I bet we’d get all kinds of bug fixes if they changed our name back to Assassin.

Last refuge is simply an outdated trait design based on a Thief system before they’ve implemented the Revealed status.

What ArenaNet needs to understand is that, just because something is “working as intended” it doesn’t necessarily means that it is working as intended, when it triggers, at all times.

What we’re asking from Last Refuge is reliability. As it stands, it triggers unexpectedly and it is applying the Reveal status when we don’t want it to.

However, by having LR all the time, I’ve learn to know when it would trigger and allow it to trigger instead of trying to stealth using my other skills.

Thus by acknowledging it’s purpose, we understand why it should remain as is.

So what is the real problem?

The problem is timing. Using CnD as an example, due to CnD’s long casting time, Last Refuge would have triggered if we are getting hit. Then it will put us in stealth then reveal us when CnD connects.

So what’s the solution?

The culprit is Blinding Powder. If ArenaNet makes Last Refuge a buff instead of triggering Blinding Powder, it will not cause reveal on attack, instead it will simply be removed.

What are the constraints?

Since making Last Refuge a buff that grant stealth without triggering a reveal, ArenaNet would have to allocate resources to develop this functionality. This means that the game would have to have a way to identify that when something is in stealth that it is not to be revealed if it is granted by the LR buff. This could pose a new problem since you would now have two separate rules governing stealth.

Looking at the big picture, LR is minuscule in comparison to other things ArenaNet has to deal with. The number of Thieves allocating points into SA are in minority that this issue might be on their To-Do list having the lowest priority.

Is there a work around?

I know of one. In PvE and WvW, you can pick up Rune of the Vampire as a cover for LR’s flaw. If you get revealed at low HP level, RotV will trigger the Mist Form effect to get you out of a jam. In PvP, you should not be allocating points into SA…but this is for another topic.

TL;DR
In conclusion, don’t expect any changes to address LR any time soon.

Their “to-do” list shouldn’t take over a year to cycle through. I understand prioritzation but this was straining credibility 6 months ago, now it’s just embarrassing.

It can’t be a hard fix, there are plenty of already existing spell effects that grant “invisiblity” instead of stealth. Seriously just fix it already.

Speaking of priorities, I sure hope Improvisation is higher on the list than LR.

I can’t believe this hasn’t been fixed yet. They even posted this was being “talked about quite a bit internally” over a year ago (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/balance/PvX-Thief-Last-Refuge/first).

Everyone’s an arm chair balance designer, but just give LR a 0.5s “Escape to the Shadows” buff before the blinding powder making you semi-immune to revealed. JUST HALF A SECOND. Long enough to finish a CnD, for that last projectile to hit or cancel your channel.

To avoid uber-insta-gib-double-backstab-lolol @25% builds, limit the reveal immunity to normal attacks (i.e. stealth attacks like backstab/sneak attack would apply revealed, CnD or vital shot would not), so best case you get .5s of invisible normal attacks.

I’ve main a thief for almost a year now and don’t really think this is an issue, sure it got me killed a couple of times but after a while of getting the hang of it and how it flows. It really isn’t a big deal. It actually saved me more times when my utilities are on cool down. I mean all you really have to do is pay attention. Isn’t good thieves suppose to play that way? Waiting for the right time to strike? Paying attention at your surroundings?

One of my suggestion was to make LR turn you into a shadow with the Shadow Form effect buff — which means, you get a buff that immunizes you to all damage for the duration and breaks the buff if you attack. It stops all actions in progress when it triggers so a CnD will not break this buff if it triggers mid way CnD casting time.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

One of my suggestion was to make LR turn you into a shadow with the Shadow Form effect buff — which means, you get a buff that immunizes you to all damage for the duration and breaks the buff if you attack. It stops all actions in progress when it triggers so a CnD will not break this buff if it triggers mid way CnD casting time.

This suggestion is still detrimental. Say you were mid HS, about to drop your opponent; LR triggers, your opponents heal goes off, and a fight that should have ended right then and there is still going.

The game shouldn’t be deciding for you to stop your HS because triggering LR is more important. LR should be designed in such a way that it triggering mid-ability is, at worst, a neutral effect – it costs you nothing, but you gain nothing.

The real way to fix LR is to have it trigger “Cloak” – “Cloak” makes you invisible, but does not give you access to stealth attacks. Landing an attack from “Cloak” does not trigger reveal. It isn’t absolutely perfect, but it’s much better than what we have now, and still better than the game deciding to interrupt what you as the player chose to do in favor of triggering LR.

If your suggestion didn’t stop actions mid-use, it’d also be a great way to fix LR.

Is it so hard to change it from Blinding Powder to Smoke Screen??? That other trait would work better with it than Last Refuge just a quick switch, simple.

Kadin.2356:

Their “to-do” list shouldn’t take over a year to cycle through. I understand prioritzation but this was straining credibility 6 months ago, now it’s just embarrassing.

It can’t be a hard fix, there are plenty of already existing spell effects that grant “invisiblity” instead of stealth. Seriously just fix it already.

Engineer hobosacks are in a similar situation – since launch, there’s been threads about them, and the response has always been ‘We just don’t have the resources at the moment.’ My theory is that they just keep shoving things into the pipeline, which keeps pushing seemingly small fixes back; if I’m right, then we can expect Last Refuge to be fixed at the same time as Hobosacks: roughly a year after the game has, for all intents and purposes, died.

Aeden.5896:

I can’t believe this hasn’t been fixed yet. They even posted this was being “talked about quite a bit internally” over a year ago (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/balance/PvX-Thief-Last-Refuge/first).

Everyone’s an arm chair balance designer, but just give LR a 0.5s “Escape to the Shadows” buff before the blinding powder making you semi-immune to revealed. JUST HALF A SECOND. Long enough to finish a CnD, for that last projectile to hit or cancel your channel.

To avoid uber-insta-gib-double-backstab-lolol @25% builds, limit the reveal immunity to normal attacks (i.e. stealth attacks like backstab/sneak attack would apply revealed, CnD or vital shot would not), so best case you get .5s of invisible normal attacks.

This is a really good idea tho.

evilapprentice.6379:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

One of my suggestion was to make LR turn you into a shadow with the Shadow Form effect buff — which means, you get a buff that immunizes you to all damage for the duration and breaks the buff if you attack. It stops all actions in progress when it triggers so a CnD will not break this buff if it triggers mid way CnD casting time.

This suggestion is still detrimental. Say you were mid HS, about to drop your opponent; LR triggers, your opponents heal goes off, and a fight that should have ended right then and there is still going.

The game shouldn’t be deciding for you to stop your HS because triggering LR is more important. LR should be designed in such a way that it triggering mid-ability is, at worst, a neutral effect – it costs you nothing, but you gain nothing.

The real way to fix LR is to have it trigger “Cloak” – “Cloak” makes you invisible, but does not give you access to stealth attacks. Landing an attack from “Cloak” does not trigger reveal. It isn’t absolutely perfect, but it’s much better than what we have now, and still better than the game deciding to interrupt what you as the player chose to do in favor of triggering LR.

If your suggestion didn’t stop actions mid-use, it’d also be a great way to fix LR.

It has to interrupt though because what would be the point of going into stealth to only lose it because you’re in a middle of casting something.

However I see your point and probably one way to resolve this is to allow the current action to finish then LR would finish afterwards. This way even if you go down from a Retal damage or condition damage, you’re already in stealth. I think that would be a great compromise.

We could just get another trait, say like, Patience, as the 1pt Shadow Arts minor and switch the two.

Although more condition cleansing across all of the builds is really what needs to happen, as that’s the biggest and in most cases only reason to trait into Shadow Arts, and even then, there’s a huge dependency there due to the lack of lower/mid cooldown cleansing on the class elsewhere.

I dont know if im weird, but I think a thief with more condi cleanse would be over powered. It has some high statying power for a full zerk class that if you make him cleanse condi more often it would be impossible for some condi class to bring down.

I dont know if im weird, but I think a thief with more condi cleanse would be over powered. It has some high statying power for a full zerk class that if you make him cleanse condi more often it would be impossible for some condi class to bring down.

You’re not weird just wrong. Keep in mind that thieves have some of the lowest hp pool in the game, even with the great shadow’s embrace the thief is still vulnerable to any power or condi damage if they’re out of stealth and it only takes a few seconds to bring them down honestly. I mean you roam a ranger, you must surely have some experience with thieves in spvp right?

I’m assuming you’re referring to effects like Shadow’s Embrace, which does allow for good condition removal, but I think putting that kind of dependency on the Shadow Arts line is kind of absurd. Shadowstep and signet of agility active are the only utility skills which can remove conditions, and those are on substantial cooldowns and are used primarily for their other effects and are fairly mediocre cleanses, anyways, and HiS only removes burning/bleeding/poison; confusion, torment, immobilize, cripple, weakness – all of those stay on the thief without traiting into shadow’s embrace.

S/x offers condition cleansing, but even then, that ties it to one specific main hand weapon, and does not provide enough mass cleansing for what’s often the most effective means of dispatching thieves: mass condition application. Not to further mention the trait emphasizes resetting fights and promotes passive play as it requires the thief to remain stealthed. Conditions are also more potent to thieves than other classes due to the low-tier health pool paired with the limited condition removal; elementalists don’t have said problems for obvious reasons, as they arguably have some of the best cleansing effects and heals in the game.

Definitely a tough act to balance – I’ll give you that – for a tanky thief running deep into Shadow Arts and also running additional cleansing with S/D would be downright dangerous to try and take down as a condition player due to all the removal, but I think some of those cleanses – even trace amounts – could be implemented elsewhere for better accessibility.

I do support the notion for removing all “get out of jail free” traits which occur when dipping below a certain health threshold. It creates a really awkward dynamic overall and makes instances like this occur.

Well i do roam with thief not only ranger.

The main difference I see is: thief kill alot faster than ranger, ranger is a bit beefier when traited right, ranger survivability is lesser when getting zerged, and ranger are really good counter to condi (ranged).

What is similar: both are extremily unforgiving. Both as way to mitigate dmg. Both are extremely mobile.

On the other hand, I use double S/D with cleansing (can be purity or generosity) sigil and shadow step +pain response. So it might only just me having not so much problem with that (in WvW).

If we want it changed and they want it to be stealth related how about just make it heal next time we enter stealth below 25% hp. It could be like mug’s heal so it wouldn’t be op but could still be the life saver it was intended to be. Problem solved.

Have a good day

Edit: We could also have it remove an extra condition if necessary. Doubt it will be needed but wanted to put it out there just in case.

What WvW build would the Thieves in here suggest if not the one on metabattle, which is: http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Thief_-_D/P_roamer

It’s a simple fix. Just use the “Camouflage” ability http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Camouflage_ instead of blinding powder. That bypasses all the problems with revealed as you are not really in stealth. That can’t be a hard fix either, just a spell ID swap.

Klonko.8341:

I dont know if im weird, but I think a thief with more condi cleanse would be over powered. It has some high statying power for a full zerk class that if you make him cleanse condi more often it would be impossible for some condi class to bring down.

Thieves don’t have problem with condi cleanse over time with shadow embrace but due to the low HP pool and no burst condi cleanse, it’s really easy to dispatch a thief with a condi bomb. Couple of times the dmg from condi bomb (applied by one player) was so high that even shadowstep + SR wouldn’t cleanse them before I got downed.

If you compare to the other two lowest HP classes, they both have burst condi cleanse and also good condi cleanse over time.

Here’s hoping that this gets fixed with the HoT drop.

A fix on this would be great. Really would just take a change in buffering priority with a simple if-then statement to force Last Refuge (or Instinctual Response) to wait for an ability to finish being used if currently in the animation for it (namely Cloak and Dagger and Heartseeker).

Also, can we plz not trigger auto attack every time we use a skill while in stealth? that would be great.

So Anet is going to not giving us attention? Seriously? I can’t believe they can’t even fix something like this.

They could be leaving it as it is intentionally… like extra counter play against thieves.

Another die after LR. Thank you anet... CnD->LR->waypoint ggwp
Its not only cnd... "lemme hs to this mob and cnd on it" *LR during hs animation* gg suicide... I thought traits should be an advantage for ME, not my ENEMY!!! I cant always monitor my hp and i think if i have to focus more on my hp("its close to 25%. should i wait or i can keep dpsing?", "hey enemy! hit me pls! i’m here doing nothing waiting for LR!") than on dpsing its something wrong. and no, not with me.

It would really be nice if after close to 2 years of dealing with this someone at Anet could give us an update.

Anet, update please. People want to know.

:| We have a necromancer on these forums…

>.>
<.<
>.>
<.<

Sverdvs.3287:

Anet, update please. People want to know.

Zero Day.2594:

:| We have a necromancer on these forums…

>.>
<.<
>.>
<.<

Sverdvs.3287:

Anet, update please. People want to know.

More like, a grave robber (Thieves, get it?).