Guild Wars 2

Where is the counter play? If I played a Guardian how do I know which attack to block when they all have the same animation.

Infiltrator’s Strike needs to have the thrust like it does now, it seems appropriate.

Larcenous Strike needs to be a bit of a flashy powered up slash.

Crippling Strike needs to be a Slash to the legs.

CS: count to 3.

LS: watch for an evade to your backside.

IS: dodge when they swap to sword at range.

Viking Jorun.5413:

CS: count to 3.

LS: watch for an evade to your backside.

IS: dodge when they swap to sword at range.

I don’t see why any of this should be necessary. There’s no reason each attack shouldn’t have a distinct animation, since the stated goal of this game is to watch the action, not cast bars.

This isn’t just a thief problem though – there are a lot of abilities across a lot of classes that could use more visual distinction.

They wouldn’t of got so much hate if they were visually different.

You can read these moves from the context of combat as Viking Jorun wrote.

Dagins.5163:

You can read these moves from the context of combat as Viking Jorun wrote.

You can’t “read” infiltrator’s strike – that’s just a silly joke. You can try to predicatively dodge when you think the thief is within 600 range of you…but that’s not reading the skill. You can do whatever you want to Inf strike, it’s an instant cast teleport – it’s almost impossible to time a dodge after the skill has been hit.

CS and LS look exactly the same – Part of the fun of S/D is sneaking in LS after a Slice and a Slash because it looks exactly like Crippling Strike. While you generally want to avoid CS as well, it can be blocked whereas LS can’t, and you might eat a CS if you’ve got important boons up and you’re saving your dodge/interrupt for that LS. There’s no logical reason they both have to look exactly the same.

Even if IS had some effect, you would’t be able to dodge it easly anyway. Not because it’s an instant cast, but also thanks to root.
If a thief breaks chain of AA, and uses LS instead of CS, he loses lots of damage for that quick boon steal.