Guild Wars 2

“Acrobatics X – Assassins Reward. Increased healing scaling by 35%. Moved to Grandmaster Tier.”

Does anyone know what the logic was behind this? I know they’re trying to give thieves more staying power, but if they wanted to do that, why didn’t they just increase the base healing?

Does anyone here actually run healing power? Will running healing power be viable after the patch? (lol)

/shrug

Don’t know. Maybe they’re trying to create bunker thieves. Did they say what is replacing it?

Fomby.4295:

Don’t know. Maybe they’re trying to create bunker thieves. Did they say what is replacing it?

They’re moving hard to catch down a tier. Too bad its a pretty bad trait. I wouldn’t mind the scaling change if assassins reward was in the healing power tree, but it’s not.

I’m just trying to think of post patch builds is all.

They’ll replace it with Hard to Catch.
And the healing was poor, so they improved it, not sure if they improved it enough to make it more viable.

I feel like 35% was a good improvement to make it worth the master slot. It’s not worth 30 trait points sunk into Acrobatics, especially since post-move there will be nothing I’d want in the master tier.

Imagi.4561:

I feel like 35% was a good improvement to make it worth the master slot. It’s not worth 30 trait points sunk into Acrobatics, especially since post-move there will be nothing I’d want in the master tier.

Pretty much this. Especially when you’re going to have to sink at least an additional 10 points into SA because acrobatics doesn’t have comparable condition removal.

Imagi.4561:

I feel like 35% was a good improvement to make it worth the master slot.

To me it’s still unclear what they meant by the “Increased healing scaling by 35%.” Do they add 35% to healing scaling, or increase the current 3.5% scaling by 35%? This question was asked in the CDI thread a few times, but went unanswered.

Current Assassin’s Reward skill is healing by 69 + 0.035 x Healing Power per initiative spent. That scaling is terrible; with 1,000 Healing Power it would add only 35 healing per initiative spent. What the 35% scaling improvement could mean is:

1. 69 + 0.04725 x Healing Power
2. 69 + 0.385 x Healing Power

Let’s look at a few examples.

Assumptions:

• Initiative regeneration 1.1 per second (default regeneration 1 per sec after Dec 10th, plus 10% more from possible traits)
• Case A 1,500 Healing Power
• Case B 1,000 Healing Power
• Case C 500 Healing Power
• Case D 160 Healing Power (Power damage thief with no specialized Healing Power gear. Divinity Runes and obligatory 30 trait points in Critical Strikes, which leaves 30 points to Acrobatics for this trait, and therefore 10 points into Shadow Arts to buff this trait by +100 Healing Power.

Constant Healing Per Second
Average healing rate per second when player is using all initiative, which regenerates at rate of 1.1/sec.

Original healing scaling 3.5%

• Case A: 121.5 /sec
• Case B: 104 /sec
• Case C: 86.5 /sec
• Case D: 74.6 /sec

Healing scaling improvement to 4.725%

• Case A: 139.875 /sec
• Case B: 116.25 /sec
• Case C: 92.625 /sec
• Case D: 76.56 /sec

Healing scaling improvement to 38.5%

• Case A: 646.5 /sec
• Case B: 454 /sec
• Case C: 261.5 /sec
• Case D: 130.6 /sec

Only the last option would bring any noticeable improvement, and be inline with other similar traits or closer to effectiveness of the infamous Healing Signet. Especially since there are no viable healing power thief builds.

My hope would be that Anet adds a group healing element to this trait, if they are moving it to Grandmaster when buffing it.

I’m personally okay with this since my build runs two trait from the Master line of Acro, and one of those was AR.

It’s still a fairly unnecessary change…

I run 1k healing power and 30 acrobatics in WvW, and I approve this change. Combined with the faster initiative regen, this looks to be a substantial boost.

misterdevious.6482:

I run 1k healing power and 30 acrobatics in WvW, and I approve this change. Combined with the faster initiative regen, this looks to be a substantial boost.

Only for builds running two master acro traits, such as mine and- I presume by your tone- yours. Otherwise, it’s a fairly… Odd buff/nerf (however you want to look at it). I’m leaning a little bit more towards nerf overall because healing power is still going to be a terrible stat, as it always has been.

Almost as bad as precision.

I’ve been wanting to make a thread about this aswell. I use Assassin’s Reward fairly often in PvE and WvW and I almost always take it for Spvp. I think the 35% boost (with whatever they mean with it) makes it useful for a master slot trait. I do not think this will be good enough for grandmaster AT ALL!!!

I quite frankly don’t get how they want to tone down the burst and up the survivability of the Thief while they are nerfing our sources of vigor, evades and wanting to place one of our 3 healing traits (the heal in stealth, venomheal and Assassin’s Reward) one tier higher, thus making it harder to fit in.
Sure they can push us into our defense traitlines and making our damage crappy if you want half- kitten d survivability but the AR trait to grandmaster is one of the things which makes Thieves go downhill, in my opinion.

sadface

I personally think that this promotion to Grand Master tier makes it more undesirable. Sure, they are making it a bit more rewarding by placing increasing the amount that it heals per init spent, but they have to take into consideration the other Grand Master traits available. Their idea behind many of the changes they made was to make it so that thieves would be more rewarded for being in a fight rather than spending more time trying to regain init and spam abilities. But for bunker Cond/Sustain thieves who aren’t running the typical power/crit build and don’t have access to the +1 init on hit/5 seconds, they take a massive nerf to init gain by being denied access to +3 init/9secs from Quick pockets if they want to even use the Assassin’s Reward for the extra sustain it’s being given. If one would want to use this trait it would be even more required to disengage during the intervals which initiate is unavailable due to the nerf to init gain, rather than maintaning presence in combat where the thief would have no initiate, and be incapable of utilizing this buff to healing.
If anything, this change makes builds that utilize this trait even less viable due to the overall nerfs to init gain.

I run it along with a base 404 healing power, 654 with full stacks of Sigil of Life, and it actually provides some decent sustain. I can’t see it being used it a competitive setting due to the necessity of burst-or-bunker where hybrid builds fall short, but it’s nice for WvW.

Here’s my build if anyone is wondering:
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAsaVlYmSO3dS6E/5Eh3jyOWzqVgmdP4q81KA-j0DBYfREREgaAiWGgQAM5pIaslhFRjVNDRVLoqkYaXQ6XwmeQ2eAGfLrWKAsFGB-w

buffed from
69 + 3.5% healing power
to
69 + 5% healing power

and moved to grandmaster

lol
what a joke. That is not grandmaster material.
elementalist 5 point minor trait is stronger than this

reikken.4961:

buffed from
69 + 3.5% healing power
to
69 + 5% healing power

and moved to grandmaster

lol
what a joke. That is not grandmaster material.
elementalist 5 point minor trait is stronger than this

I’m healed for 508 each pistol whip and can regain initiative through steal, Roll for Initiative and base regen. I feel that people expect it to be a primary source of healing, and it’s not meant to be.

The actual difference is about 1 additional healing per 100 healing power. Look on GW2skills before they update, and compare any spec to live.

Ignoring the fact that most thief specs can’t afford to stack healing power, that’s ridiculous. The term “35%” feels disingenuous when you realize it translates to 1 additional healing per init spent per 100 healing power.

Viking Jorun.5413:

reikken.4961:

buffed from
69 + 3.5% healing power
to
69 + 5% healing power

and moved to grandmaster

lol
what a joke. That is not grandmaster material.
elementalist 5 point minor trait is stronger than this

I’m healed for 508 each pistol whip and can regain initiative through steal, Roll for Initiative and base regen. I feel that people expect it to be a primary source of healing, and it’s not meant to be.

People want it to be worth a grandmaster trait – general consensus is that it is not.

style.6173:

As others have said, they moved it because they wanted to make hard to catch more accessible. It just shows the “balance” team has no clue about thieves. I doubt many people would take hard to catch even at the adept tier.

Of course they won’t – We’re talking about a trait that teleports the thief in a random direction, for a random distance between 1 and 600, and doesn’t break the CC. The skill shares more characteristics with CC abilities (Random teleport for random distance who’s activation is not under the players control) than it does with a beneficial ability, and it doesn’t break the CC.