Guild Wars 2

Sanduskel.1850:

Noty angry. Just presenting facts. they wouldn’t be so insistent to fix this if they didn’t think it was a serious problem. abuse is abuse. it’s a strong word to use for something that you think isn’t a big deal.

I don’t have a problem with the infusion change. I have a problem with the opportunist nerf. It completely counter intuitive and a much larger nerf than 33% boost to init regen.

Also I am tired of having thief traits nerfed and nothing else buffed to compensate and make thief build diversity grow.

Sure nerf infusion , but make it our 5pt minor so we can choose different traits and grow our build diversity.

Anet never does stuff like this for the thief class, but they do it for every other class.

I also feel sword #2 nerf kills s/d build. Thief doesn’t need another useless weaponset. Also another nerf with no real alternative other than never using the weaponset again.

These changes are good but it limits our class even further.

If anet is going to close doors for this class they need to open some others.

Sanduskel.1850:

Noty angry. Just presenting facts. they wouldn’t be so insistent to fix this if they didn’t think it was a serious problem. abuse is abuse. it’s a strong word to use for something that you think isn’t a big deal.

Nope, you said game breaking. Proven wrong yet again but you your reply is “just stating facts”. Fact: you said gand breaking not abuse".

Your signature pretty much tells us all we need to know.

You know they are tweaking initiative regen more than the frequency of stealthing right?

You barely have a basis for your argument because the point of this update is “to make thieves less reliant on initiative gain traits” and not “preventing the abuse of chain stealthing”.

This thread isn’t even about permastealth. You might want to change your argument to something more on topic.

Well permastealth was mentioned as part of the changes, so it seems related..

Under what evidence?

In the patch notes and subsequent discussions from Jon, lol

He is talking about Infusion of Shadow which grants you initiative when stealth is applied. Sounds more like initiative gain.

Try again.

This thread was created by Jon to discuss the top five topics he has seen in other pages. If all of you are currently confused about which topics to discuss, check his page 1 post and pick 1, or more.
I personally am very passionate about discussing thief changes and don’t want to have to read through so many conversations that skew further off topic.
I am not attacking anyone, this is just a ‘fed up’ with these types of posts from page 1, day 1.
What I wanted to say was, OMG I can’t believe i missed this one:
evilapprentice.6379 said about Sword builds; “…reduce the amount of time before IR flips back to IS…”
Perfect nerf IMO. Skill is still powerful, but skill rotation will have to change, used less often, or you’ll lose Ini and get bursted. I could see Sword builds become quite bursty with an ‘in and out’ style. If vigor get nerfed too much tho, sword builds need some other form of sustain or may not be playable.

Chaszyrr, I would like to discuss Jon’s topic further, however sanduskel has been posting nothing of substance by arguing about permastealth which is totally not the point of this update. He has effectively managed to derail this thread for the past 13 pages. I am surprised he isn’t suspended yet. :I

I know I have sent numerous reports about derailment and trolling on his part and every day I still see him posting. I (as well as plenty of others) would like him to either get on track or get out because so far he has not helped in the progression of this thread but in fact has halted it to “permastealth”… over 10 pages of it.

I am simply voicing my support of anet’s changes and requesting that they proceed to consider fixing current thief limitations such as ranged attacks. I am sorry that you disagree, by I am trying to support the class. This began because one poster claimed that anet only listened to bad players. I simply defended anet, so I don’t understand what the fuss is about.

You’ve derailed this thread more than anything, sand. Nothing legitimate to say other than being purely against “permastealth”. Over 20 people have made it clear that they heard you the first time.

But you play innocent when people call you out.

Why put so much effort in breaking a profession when you can use that energy by being constructive? No you don’t care about this profession and you’ve made is apparent from day 1 dude.

Letting you continue to go offtopic on a serious thread for more than 10 pages only augments my suspicious that what you are doing is entirely okay with the staff.

So no, I don’t think anything you’ve said so far and the handling of this profession by the devs is worth trusting. This is why people stopped playing and why not very many people are going to play this profession in the future.

I am being serious, it’s not all about perma stealth. I like the init changes. I agree with Jon that they are an improvement if used correctly. I don’t want those to get drowned out by all this negativity. I trust these developers to know their business. Some of the other changes are good for the class as well. They aren’t all nerfs. That’s my feedback to these changes. I don’t understand why this is considered derailing. Sheesh.

That’s not what your post history says.

Spamming the same point all across a single forum.
Not providing any evidence to claims you make.
Halting the progression of a discussion with non-substantiated opinions.

It is fine that you want to be heard but spamming the same point will only make it harder for people (including anet) to care about it.

EDIT: You tend to contradict your words with your actions so that statement is basically a lie.

Zacchary.6183:

That’s not what your post history says.

Spamming the same point all across a single forum.
Not providing any evidence to claims you make.
Halting the progression of a discussion with non-substantiated opinions.

It is fine that you want to be heard but spamming the same point will only make it harder for people (including anet) to care about it.

EDIT: You tend to contradict your words with your actions so that statement is basically a lie.

it’s enstablished that sanduskel is just a troll. you should stop feed him and move on.

I don’t enable people in the wrong especially when enabling/ignoring does nothing productive.

Actually I just had a good idea. There has been a large cry out about Ini traits, for good reason. I think Jon wants thieves to take some and not as many as possible for max ini, then spam the best weapon skill you can find.

It seems that Ini regen traits will become about 1 ini per 10s, with exceptions like IoS, Opportunist, QP and HR. Two of which are Grandmaster. This means that taking a lot of them will pigeonhole your build.

I would like some feedback on how Ini traits could also be coupled with diverse effects that would be beneficial to specific weapons or combat roles.
Eg. all other classes have weapon skill recharge traits, which is useless to the thief, but are often coupled with other effects, such as mesmer – focus reflects or torch cleanses.
The Ini traits might not have effects, but would now need to meet requirements, Opportunist might grant 2 Ini on interrupt with cd (insert cd arguments :P)
IoS could grant 1 Ini on stealth and 1 Ini when attacking from stealth, rather than the “entering Stealth” differentiation.

NinjaEd.3946:

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

As a Thief main,

Can you give me some depth behind the Infiltrator’s Strike change? Especially why have you decided to add more cast time to Infiltrator’s Return instead of disabling the skill when the thief is stunned/dazed/immobilized?

In my opinion adding more cast time just makes the whole mechanic more clunky and still allows Thieves to get out of sticky situations they shouldn’t be able to.

If a Thief is stunned, unless he uses a stunbreaker, he should remain as such. Infiltrator’s Return bypassing CC is clearly broken and counter intuitive in my opinion.
If a Thief is stunned or dazed he shouldn’t be able to use Infiltrator’s Return. You need to add some punishment if a Sword Thief is caught without a stunbreaker up. You need to create some separators between average thieves and GREAT thieves. *

A GREAT Thief would use Infiltrator’s Return before the stun arrives, that’s good reward. An average Thief wouldn’t have the timing to avoid the stun and therefor would be punished.

Skill vs Reward/Punishment is something we need

Infiltrator’s Return can’t be the “OH SHIET” button. That’s not very balanced for competitive play.
Introducing this fix, would you go as far as not going foward with this cast time increase and maybe reducing initiative cost? What are your thoughts on this?

You do realize the only stun breakers thief has are either long cd, not all that controllable, or actually hurt you more than help? Also we have no stability, but sure, we’re op….

Infiltrator’s return does NOT break stun as it used to, which is fine. I actually thought that it was rather op back then, but now all it does is displace. It doesn’t recover from launch, or knockback, it just moves you away. Ranged players have no problem getting a few more hits in before you’re back up.

We also have 0 protection and blocks/counters on land. So I ask you, do you even play thief? I can’t help but notice that someone who “main” thief asking for further nerfs to the already overrated profession is coming from the fields of solo queue where pug stomping is a pleasure.

You clearly misundertood me then.

What I asked is for them to revert the Infiltrator’s Return cast time nerf, and to change it so that when a Thief is CC’d he can’t use Infiltrator’s Return.

This isn’t a nerf. This is how you will separate bad Sword Thieves from great Sword Thieves. Great Sword Thieves will use Infiltrator’s Return before the CC lands, by predicting the enemies movements. Bad Sword Thieves will get caught in CC and be punished for it, because they didn’t avoided/dodged it.

That’s how a competitive game should be, punishing bad plays and rewarding good plays.

The current state of the game, and what you are specifically asking, is another dumbing down of the game, making it casual-balanced instead of increasing the game’s skill cap.

As a thief main, sorry for wanting my class having an increased skill cap, which would only do good for the game as a whole in PvP.

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

[…]

You are arguing with people whose argument is “thieves have no stability”. Why even bother?

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

Bad Sword Thieves will get caught in CC and be punished for it, because they didn’t avoided/dodged it.

Meanwhile other classes hardly are punished for any of the kind, with forms of block, invulnerability, stability, 35k health pools, PvE elements doing all damage and mopping up all damage, 3500 armor, protection, decoys, passive regen and even counterstuns.

Don’t get me wrong, I approve that Infiltrator’s Return wont escape stuns and I approve whatever makes the game harder, but I don’t believe that thieves should be a lot less forgiving than any other class, they were fine as they were now, what they’ll be in a month I don’t even wanna think about.

Bring every other class down to the same unforgiving skill level that sword thieves will be in, then we can discuss nerfs and how to improve skill-wise play further.

Erzian.5218:

You are arguing with people whose argument is “thieves have no stability”. Why even bother?

Because thieves have very little in the way of mitigating CC since our stunbreakers are pretty lackluster and with the current condi/cc overkill meta, a stunned thief is an easy kill, that’s why. Also add in our lack of effective condi removal outside stealth and lack of damage mitigation, blocks, etc to spice up things.

by my own experience: It takes ridiculous effort on zerker thief (especially P/P) in wvw to actually at least force into retreat things like tanky guardians/rangers, wont even be mentioning mesmers and warriors running nothing but defensive utilities.
Not even because of the amount of defenses they have – much more so due to the fact even being in tanky gear they destroy clueless zerk thief in seconds.

There has never been a time I won against those because I was a thief or gear (only 2 ascended accessories, rabid green back, rare rings). There were times where I was saved by shadow refuge – but that does not count as offensive move.
Its just I can’t even take initiative major traits or vigor major traits against them – otherwise no matter how good my survival is I can’t even damage those.
Now out of these changes:
Permastealth – I did not use use and just as well never considered it to be a problem when it was used against me. There wasn’t a single case where such a thief defeated me 1 vs 1, I would even consider myself dangerous to them due to unload channel and black powder blind. I can see where the frustration (and the rightful nerf) is coming from, but to be honest – with currently avaiable both SPvP and WvW objectives – permastealth in no way affects balance. So-to-say – this change is more casual player base oriented rather than some pressing balance issue. Still, I don’t care.

Second change: the cast time of IR. To be honest, I dropped S/anything the very day they started destroying it so this change does not affect me much. And I won’t ever consider S/anything a viable main weapon set until at least dual skills start working and doing something. Remember, PW got nerfed year ago because of its synergy with quickness? Guess what, quickness was nerfed after too, but PW never got its damage back. Even more so, PW got hit every balance patch even more.

Well, and initiative changes. As I stated – with update we will get more initiative by doing nothing. And we get a lot less initiative and vigor from traits. Well I don’t take initiative or vigor majors anyway so who cares. But for what reason do I get obligatory nerf on obligatory minors? I mean ANET comes and claims that we are held hostages by minor traits we CANT choose. So opportunist is getting nerfed because every power thief has 30 in critical strikes. Kleptomaniac is getting nerfed because… its a 5 minor trait? Or what reason?

I can’t understand. I specifically wait for my enemies block/invulnerability/evade to end, for them to blow their dodges so my unloads will land on them, crit on them, proc traits on them. And now my reward for being able to land a whole unload on a target is being taken away. Why am I being forced into blowing my initiative away into a trash can just so I can benefit from the new initiative regen instead of working hard to benefit from my own traits?
This is not as much of a change to thieves as much as it is a buff to the any and all defensive abilities which, for some reason, thief is the only one to not possess.

Take an example: a very frequent situation for me – a lone P/P-Shortbow zerker thief against staff-gs dire/soldier mix guardian.
Well, I have superior mobility, so I am more likely to both notice the guardian first and attack him before he uses pre-buffs or changes utilities.
So what do I do? First attack is obviously vital shot followed by immediate unload or straight unload. Means you either choose to get aegis off and land as many hits as possible before he reacts, or go for as many hits before reaction as possible with the delay between 2 unload shots (first of which take aegis off) being much smaller than delay between vital and unload.
After 1-2-3 hits in dodge comes. First mistake they make as unload outlasts dodge and usually at least last shot makes it in. 2-4 hits in. Alas, 2-4 crits in. New opportunist is at 75%-93.75% chance of refunding us with 1 initiative. Old opportunist has a 51%-76% chance of recovering at least 1 initiative, and 9%-26% of recovering 2 initiative. Even considering that old one can proc twice, new one is better due to the higher proc chance.
BUT. The new one gets 3.75-5 seconds cooldown (depending on which of the crits procced it). While old one has, in worst case scenario, a 1 sec cooldown with 21% chance. 79% chance to have 0 cooldown.
Tecnically, we also regened 1.31 initiative with old regen or 1.75 initiative with new regen.
Old so far: 1.31 initiative with 49-23% chance or 2.31 initiative with 42-50% or 3.31 initiative with 9-26% chance (with 2-4 hits). If guardian does not dodge its 7-8 crits and considerably greater chance on initiative return. (22-23% for 2 and 69-71% for 1 initiative). And a around 50-10% for a 0.22-1 second cooldown.
New so far: 1.75 initiative with 25-6% chance. 75-93% chance for 2.75 initiative. And 3.25-5 sec cooldown. If we get all hits in? Same 2.75 regen, same cooldown.

OKay, continue on combat simulation. Guard took only 2 hits. At the end of dodge, he either charges me with gs. I cannot allow myself be hit and even more so to get a dire burn on. I dodge (0.7-1 sec lost). At this point the actions of guardian usually decide the outcome and how fast it comes.
There are 3 rather acceptable variants, but most go for closing in again on foot. This comes with unload (at least 4-kittens) to their face at which point old opportunist and old regen win by far. Once they make it into melee I usually pop pistol 5, forcing them into retreat and switching weapon to staff.
What the difference? With old opportunist and old regen there is a decent (70%-ish) chance I will be able to use one more unload at this point. With new things, there is 100% chance that I will not.
And this unload is the most important one – at this point guardian either dodges or takes enough damage to start blowing the cds.
If I don’t have enough for unload – guardian is most likely to spend some of his time buffing might (Which i will be forced to interrupt (if i am lucky enough to not get into aegis at the point) and waste whatever was left of my initiative).
To summarize:
Option A forced guardian into defensive mode (where difference in initiative regen for thief is neglible).
Option B forces thief in defensive mode (most likely going into shadow refuge and retreating for a while). Alas, either thief does not care about ini regen (long retreat) or he will not have enough of it no matter how buffed it is (for option without st and with shortbow defenses).

This is really sad that Anet/jon is not thinking that this opportunist nerf is affecting p/p build really bad.

Please don’t nerf opportunist .

Sword, being the most underused weapon for a thief in the first place, will be significantly worse with a cast time on Infiltrator’s Return. In the first place, for sword to be effective, one has to run full Berserker’s or Assassin’s. This squishiness already hurts any S/P or S/D thief a lot. Putting a cast time on Infiltrator’s Return reduces the thieves mobility. The idea of sword main hand is its unpredictability and ability to get out of a sticky situation. This is my only complaint with the Thief patches seeing as I don’t use d/p or d/d anymore l0l.

Jon

Since you are nerfing opportunist why dont you think about giving us regain full initiative on weapon swap during combat. Since other class can swap weapons during their main weapon cool downs.

<_<

<random_thoughts_rant>

I just don’t get it.

Perma-stealthing is the obvious focus, although in reality, it only hurts the Thief in any sort of competitive fashion (PvP, WvWvW).

I understand Infusion of Shadow changes. I can see that being somewhat of a concern. It’s a little cheesy, but I always felt that removing myself from the fight (to reset, not to survive) was more of a hindrance than a help. Personal opinion, and your mileage may vary depending on if you were facing a D/P Thief or you are the D/P Thief. xD

So, it allowed a Thief to reset a fight, regain initiative, and make people uncomfortable because they don’t know the Thief’s location. OK, fine, whatever. It seems like an answer to a problem and complaints shouted out from the mountaintops that is the forums, but it is what it is.

However, asking (read: forcing) the Thief to stick around in fights while severely reducing their effectiveness (-initiative, -vigor, etc.) and marginally increasing their survivability (+healing) is counter-productive.

It’s so great. I can get Deadly Arts 30 and Acrobatics 30 to get max toughness and vitality and really capitalize on that +healing scaling because that trait is now Grandmaster. Those other 10 points are certainly going to bring the damages, right? Forgetting that now I am forced to dodge less and regen initiative less. whee.

We are getting penalized for guerrilla warfare tactics and being told that is incorrect game play for a profession that is supposed to be slippery. Our bare minimum tool set for being slippery is constantly and systematically being reduced. Why not give a point of initiative on a successful Evade, thus promoting skillful game play?

The only answer for asking Thieves to stick around and keep the pressure on was a healing scaling increase. Have you forgot about all the direct damage nerfs to our skills from previous patches? Then you bump up Assassin’s Reward to Grandmaster to put it even more out of reach? Insult to injury, and then we get pushed down the stairs. And in exchange for what? Hard to Catch? More like Easy To Choose Another Trait.

Sword changes force Thieves to be in a fight longer than necessary, because you want them to “stick around”?

And then a bunch of changes to traits no one uses or wants.

The first thought when faced with a trait that is not popular (i.e., unused), should not be to move it to make it more accessible. If the trait is worth its salt, then there would be little issue choosing it at the higher tier. Moving it down a tier is (what I believe) a lazy attempt at balance. The better approach would be a re-look at the trait with feedback.

A good start might be a graphing of builds and traits used across weapon sets to understand why certain traits are not used, even within their “wheelhouse” build or weapon set(s).

Just so … frustrating.

Arg.

</random_thoughts_rant>

Whoever said devs never play their is wrong.
L2p, this video will help https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLEfsBTh6_A&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Malik.6781:

Whoever said devs never play their is wrong.
L2p, this video will help https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLEfsBTh6_A&feature=youtube_gdata_player

“Brand new thief”, “lvl 20”, “use it in PvE” and vid is dated over a month ago (meaning its fairly new). Most of the stuff he stated I already know about.

I am glad that there is at least one dev on the thief but it is apparent that he has not done very much theorycrafting on it. However, he does know what he is doing for the most part.

I hope this dev is passionate about that profession if he claims to like it so much and I hope that he would get a group together filled with truly passionate thief players to discuss the profession in detail.

To have a thief is not the same like to play a thief

I admit that I haven’t looked through the many posts made so far to see if anyone has said this already. However, I must express my complete disagreement with the idea that putting a cast time on the sword’s Shadow Return will matter in “only 2 situations.”

I am very PvE-centric in my playing style and experience, and the greatest usefulness of Shadow Return on my S/P (formerly S/D) thief is being able to teleport away from attacks during the moment’s notice I have to dodge them. I use this tactic all the time as part of my regular combat style, and the instant cast is vital. Since there’s a small but crucial delay where I have to wait before doing other skills after basic-attack slashes and the Pistol Whip evasion, I need to be able to activate Shadow Return immediately. The reason I switched away from S/D was because I had to wait to finish my last sword slash before I could start the tiny dodge period on the dual-wield skill. I’ll be out of options if the other sword skill takes even longer to do.

I also think Shadow Return’s stun-counter function was already balanced by letting it be activated during stuns without breaking them. Removing that little help is totally not necessary. My loadout (in addition to Signet of Shadows and Shadow Refuge) has Roll for Initiative as one stun-break every 60 seconds, which for a fragile class is way too little in big conflicts, PvE and PvP alike. If I filled my bar with stun-breakers, I wouldn’t have the movement speed or emergency stealth that help me avoid stuns in the first place. Venom builds will be even worse off; I can’t see how those who use swords are supposed to compensate for losing their main source of stun-escaping. It would be disappointing to see this pressure put on Thieves to integrate stun-breakers when the initiative change (for which I give the devs a hearty thank you) is intended to help a lot of existing builds do better.

As much as I’m focusing on the practical aspects of having a cast time, it’s also just a lot more fun to be able to zip around a battle with instant teleports. It lets me feel like the uncatchable specter of death that Thieves should be when played well. Putting a delay on Shadow Return, even just 1/4 of a second, would kill that feeling entirely. If I have to interrupt myself for a moment every time I shadowstep back, I’ve suddenly gone from effortless assassin to struggling wannabe who either can’t slip any attacks in, or gets hit by everything just before the quick escape. Or who just doesn’t use shadowstepping anymore.

Someone else suggested reducing Shadow Return’s range and/or up time after Infiltrator’s Strike. I agree that these would be better reductions to make to the skill. In fact, reducing up time might be handy after combat.

Now, all of this being said, I understand that PvP is extremely important for the devs to consider. As a mostly PvE player, I have less insight into how Shadow Return balances against other players. I’m just urging Anet not to make one experience more fun at the cost of the other.

JonPeters.5630:

Infiltrator’s Return
The thing I have heard the second most discussion regarding. This is a big change to this skill, but we beleive it is a necessary one. In many cases this is not going to matter. There are only 2 situations where this is a truly impactful change.
1) It stops you from using this skill while stunned, which puts more burden on Sword/Dagger thieves saving their stun breakers. This is the kind of gameplay we want to encourage because it puts more risk in using a rewarding skill like Infiltrator’s Strike.
2) Mostly in PvP, this skill can no longer be used by S/D thieves to teleport stomp someone. This is actually the more impactful moment as it occurs more often, but I think it puts the burden on these players to run a second weapon set that can help them in these situations (OH pistol for instance.)

Jon

I would like you guys to reconsider the change to Infiltrator’s Return. Thieves survivability outside of stealth isn’t that great. We are one of the squishiest classes’ in the game and rely on our dodges and other mobile skills (Infiltrators) to keep us alive vs heavy cc or AoE classes. I may even argue that we’re squishier then Elementalist, while they do have the lowest health pool exactly to thieves and the lowest armor in game they have 7 direct accesses to protection a 33% damage reduction. Thieves have non.

If your argument is that having a built in stun breaker into our weapon sets is bad for the game i’d like to argue that we are not the only class with weapon skills such as these. Mesmer’s have two weapon sets with similar abilities to blink away or break the stun all together “Phase Retreat”(10 sec cd) on staff or “Swap” (12 sec cd) on main hand sword. Both of which can be traited for a quicker “built in stun break”.

This change will greatly effect the play style of the weapon set and lead to less build diversity. More people will flock to builds with greater utility and damage such as Dagger Pistol.

I hope you will reconsider the change, thank you for you time.

Zacchary.6183:

Malik.6781:

Whoever said devs never play their is wrong.
L2p, this video will help https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLEfsBTh6_A&feature=youtube_gdata_player

“Brand new thief”, “lvl 20”, “use it in PvE” and vid is dated over a month ago (meaning its fairly new). Most of the stuff he stated I already know about.

I am glad that there is at least one dev on the thief but it is apparent that he has not done very much theorycrafting on it. However, he does know what he is doing for the most part.

I hope this dev is passionate about that profession if he claims to like it so much and I hope that he would get a group together filled with truly passionate thief players to discuss the profession in detail.

sorry if I was sound sarcastic, but yea, devs only know thief class from pve side, I wish they will take closer view on pvp thief role, and listen thief community, even here’s few of them left.

you hit the nail on the head my friend. Anet is running a skeleton crew on gw2. The big fail of gw2 is not only the fact of them paying attention and putting in follow up effort but in who they listen to. they listen to the QQers. the ones that suck at the game. and nerf nerf nerf thief even tho they have no spot in wvw tpvp or spvp or pve in a preferential group preselected due to usefulness. they pandered to everyone when they made this game. they wanted old people and young….women AND men….all classes to play this game. thats why they dumbed it down…got rid of the skills like gw1 had and just kinda made them concrete with a few utilities. gw1 was too much to handle for a casual player making a build. they dumbed this game down so much its rediculous. and this is also how they are dealing with nerfs/balancing. they dont care about the die hards that still play. they want a wider player base. even if they just buy the game and play it for a couple months. thats a huge win. i think my next game will be somethign more advanced and panderers to real gamers rather than easy moders. they only QQ and cant figure out hotkeys or reactions / predictions…its lame. nothing against them …just ruins my kind of fun.

what do you guys think about traits like this? dont matter where you put them. feel free to change the cooldowns etc. just some very rough ideas. the focus of these ideas are to let us stay in combat for more than a 2 second burst. this will allow us to play tpvp and wvw better.

1v1 Trait ideas

Circus tumbling:
Dodge rolls that evade attacks 25% chance knock down attacker for 1s (3s ICD)

Minds Eye Blind:
When recieving 33% of HP in 1 hit gain invulnerabilty for 3 seconds (20s ICD)

Fools Gold:
When you run out of initiative gain 6 initiative. lose all endurance and -50% endurance regeneration 5seconds. (45s ICD)

20v20 Trait ideas

Flashing Daggers:
While actively attacking you have a 75% chance to block range and 15% chance to block melee attacks.

Berserkers Boast:
Every Critical heals you for 100 healing +20 more per target hit. I.E. 5 targets would be 200 healing each for a total of 1000 health gained. If 5 targets are hit then nearby allies gain the same healing.

Party Trick:
Every time you are damaged while stealthed you have a 33% chance to gain 450 healing and +2 seconds of swiftness.

Whispers Wager:
Any time you activate an elite your next attack if successful heals you for 3000 health and deals 1500 damage, if it misses you gain 4 random conditions for 6 seconds.

Shadow Contract:
If you lose your health in less than 3 seconds, you gain swiftness for 10 seconds and your life total may not deplete lower than 1 HP for 10 seconds. (45s ICD)

Now all of these in the 20v20 section are made so they really dont do much in 1v1 or 2v2 etc etc but really help out the group or the thief really get into combat for a lil bit and dig in. tell me what you think. not saying i have the best ideas or want all of these. just some new ideas to get out there. just wanna see the thief be able to use SD SP DD DP in wvw/tpvp without having to roam, even if its just for small stints.

Without having Protection, Aegis, Invulnerability, high HP, High armor, high toughness, blocks etc etc….. i think thieves kind of deserve somethign to make them viable in those situations.

Why is this posted here? bc it seems to me that devs think initiative is a problem which is def not a very needed change. They dont realize we have to do nothign in zergs bc we die in 2 secs….and in tpvp we have to find 1 v 1 areas and cant cap bc of invis…. … pve is just bleh! Hope you guys enjoyed the ideas.

I’m having more fun on my Feral Druid these days. Besides it’s developed by a company that fired certain employees out of the company for good reason back in the days. (you know where they are now)

I have AntiAliasing, Smooth graphical game-play, abilities I can use while moving, more than 1 Skill bar on my screen, actual GMs within the game, actual game Options within the game, ect., ect. This could go on for days. Anyway, I don’t mind the Walt Disney graphics. At least it has a well educated development team behind it.

Crawford.4135:

I’m having more fun on my Feral Druid these days. Besides it’s developed by a company that fired certain employees out of the company for good reason back in the days. (you know where they are now)

I have AntiAliasing, Smooth graphical game-play, abilities I can use while moving, more than 1 Skill bar on my screen, actual GMs within the game, actual game Options within the game, ect., ect. This could go on for days. Anyway, I don’t mind the Walt Disney graphics. At least it has a well educated development team behind it.

Please, let’s not take the discussion there.

Crawford.4135:

I’m having more fun on my Feral Druid these days. Besides it’s developed by a company that fired certain employees out of the company for good reason back in the days. (you know where they are now)

I have AntiAliasing, Smooth graphical game-play, abilities I can use while moving, more than 1 Skill bar on my screen, actual GMs within the game, actual game Options within the game, ect., ect. This could go on for days. Anyway, I don’t mind the Walt Disney graphics. At least it has a well educated development team behind it.

Lol this game is still 10x better than that one. they can keep their mediocre employees with that cartoonish game.

Lets not go into negativity and comparing. Lets focus on trying to make this game better.

Jesse.4631:

I would like you guys to reconsider the change to Infiltrator’s Return. Thieves survivability outside of stealth isn’t that great. We are one of the squishiest classes’ in the game and rely on our dodges and other mobile skills (Infiltrators) to keep us alive vs heavy cc or AoE classes. I may even argue that we’re squishier then Elementalist, while they do have the lowest health pool exactly to thieves and the lowest armor in game they have 7 direct accesses to protection a 33% damage reduction. Thieves have non.

If your argument is that having a built in stun breaker into our weapon sets is bad for the game i’d like to argue that we are not the only class with weapon skills such as these. Mesmer’s have two weapon sets with similar abilities to blink away or break the stun all together “Phase Retreat”(10 sec cd) on staff or “Swap” (12 sec cd) on main hand sword. Both of which can be traited for a quicker “built in stun break”.

This change will greatly effect the play style of the weapon set and lead to less build diversity. More people will flock to builds with greater utility and damage such as Dagger Pistol.

I hope you will reconsider the change, thank you for you time.

Agreed completely, and it is not often I would agree with a [Yarr]

Please reconsider the Sword changes, they really will hurt.

eliminate IR cast time could be traitable in SA traitline. There are so many good traits in SA that it would still be a nerf to have to sacrifice one.
And Travlane, some of those traits are so OP. It sounds cool but you would have to dumb down the values.

Jrunyon.3012:

Agreed completely, and it is not often I would agree with a [Yarr]

Please reconsider the Sword changes, they really will hurt.

But we Yarr are always right ;D but yeah it really does effect my playstyle. I usually stay in s/d a large portion of the fights.

infiltrator’s return nerf is gonna be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. i can deal with permastealth being nerfed, heck i’m even a little for it. but giving THE CLASS THAT SPECIALIZES IN MOBILITY less mobility in a world full of cc is not cool people. if you’re gonna do that i honestly don’t know how i’m planning on playing my thief in pvp. you’re narrowing it to kite-tastic p/d condi builds imo.

Chaszyrr.6479:

eliminate IR cast time could be traitable in SA traitline. There are so many good traits in SA that it would still be a nerf to have to sacrifice one.
And Travlane, some of those traits are so OP. It sounds cool but you would have to dumb down the values.

yeah i know some are op. but i tried to focus the OP ones on the large combat areas so they dont affect 2 v 2 and 1 v 1 stuff. more like 5 v 5+ bc all the dmg we take is instant death. its just a few ways to keep us alive for a little longer. not forever just 5-10 secs in a 10 v 10. of course the numbers could be played with but the general idea is there. right now we cant get into large fights bc of that.

Spanny.9256:

infiltrator’s return nerf is gonna be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. i can deal with permastealth being nerfed, heck i’m even a little for it. but giving THE CLASS THAT SPECIALIZES IN MOBILITY less mobility in a world full of cc is not cool people. if you’re gonna do that i honestly don’t know how i’m planning on playing my thief in pvp. you’re narrowing it to kite-tastic p/d condi builds imo.

yeah im already playing p/d in tpvp spvp and even wvw. the D/P trickery build is so agressive that it becomes overly vulnerable to so many builds. not very viable IMO.

Jon,

Can we expect any commentary on the impact the Opportunist change will have on Pistol/Pistol builds which rely heavily on Unload?

I’ve posted the supporting math several times, and there’s a ton of supporting documentation from other thieves on this issue.

Pistol/Pistol is a thief set that needs a little love as it is, and while I’m on board with these changes to Initiative on the whole, the changes to Opportunist are absolutely going to devastate P/P thieves, who get more hits per second via Unload (thus using Opportunist more) and who are more initiative starved than most other builds.

I’m saying I like all the other initiative changes, but if the ICD goes to 5 seconds for Opportunist, it’ll be a serious nail in the coffin for one of the weakest Thief playstyles.

I know that your intention is not to limit build diversity, so what’s up? The whole community is screaming for acknowledgment on this issue, so if you intend to proceed with these changes, can we at least get the reasoning behind it?

The baseline initiative buff does NOT make up for the difference that’s being lost out on from Opportunist for Unload Thieves. They’re in the hole before we even talk about the reduction in other initiative generating traits.

Edit: If you think that the change to Opportunist is better for class balance on the whole (it certainly affects other builds much, much less), then please consider reducing the initiative cost of Unload from 5 to 4.

Chaszyrr.6479:

eliminate IR cast time could be traitable in SA traitline. There are so many good traits in SA that it would still be a nerf to have to sacrifice one.
And Travlane, some of those traits are so OP. It sounds cool but you would have to dumb down the values.

Why would you want to set up a weaponset that absolutely required points in a certain line? and SA of all things? There are no “must have” traits in SA for Sword MH, because Sword MH has no use for SA.

Traits should bring different flavors to weaponsets, not absolutely define them.

If i can understand that Anet want to nerf initiative regen (however it’s what makes Thief profession so specific), is it necessary to nerf ALL initiative regen traits or skills in THE SAME TIME?

What i would like to say is that nerfing all will affect all kind of builds, and also all kind of gameplay. For exemple, nerfing Kleptomaniac, where as it’s a Steal using traits is quite disappointing : You steal on enemy, so you take a risk, and the bonus you can get of this risk is nerf?

Nerfing Quick Recovery, Signet Use, etc... is quite understable, but Kleptomaniac?

Other thing : for me, Ricochet and Ankle Shots need to be switch, as Ricochet seems more interesting for direct damage people than Ankle Shots, that would more look like a Trickery on my own opinion.

kleptomaniac and quick recovery shouldnt be touched. putting these 2 lower is just not worth it. kleptomaniac is 3 init per 35 seconds. quick recovery is 2 init per 10 seconds. making these any less is just not even worth having. id rather have a 2 sec immob than 2 init on steal as it works for both condi and burst.

Infiltrators return….this is killing a playstyle. thieves cannot last more than 2 seconds in a 6v6 or larger fight as is….now they cant play s/d or s/p bc of this nerf. theres no escape. i mean sure SS once every minute…but that means you can fight once for a few seconds every minute without annihilation in larger fights. thieves dont have blocks protection invulnerability aegis heavy armor high toughness or high HP….. IR should have 0 cast time and break stuns. id rather see it cost 1 more init than this nonsense. btw nobody really uses IR to stomp…ive NEVER seen it even once. SS stomp? sure….but whats the problem its about a minute CD.

Thieves dont have a 2nd weaponset to go to. 1 ini per 1 sec should have been on launch in my opinion. sure we can spam 3 of the same skill in a row. but then we are done for 15 seconds to do it agian. other classes go 2 3 4 5 swap 2 3 4 5 swap 2 3 …then have a small break……. its not comparable at all!

Travlane.5948:

Thieves dont have a 2nd weaponset to go to. 1 ini per 1 sec should have been on launch in my opinion.

actually it was 1 init per second in beta and if I’m not mistaking at launch as well, it was nerfed to 0,75 later.

Volrath.1473:

Travlane.5948:

Thieves dont have a 2nd weaponset to go to. 1 ini per 1 sec should have been on launch in my opinion.

actually it was 1 init per second in beta and if I’m not mistaking at launch as well, it was nerfed to 0,75 later.

no kidding. i didnt know that. they should have kept it then. our lack of a 2nd weaponset to use for attacks hurts. but we pay that price to use same skills more than once.

QUESTION for ANET/PLAYERS:

:)

S/P or S/D or D/D D/P build …..analyze init regen buff vs init gain nerf on the dec 10th patch. will it equate the same? better? worse? im going to guess worse …. as im writing this i have no idea how this will come out so… here goes.

Withdraw – Healing —-————- 15s CD
Infiltrators Signet – Tele 900 range CD + 2 init —-——-24s CD
Signet of Agility- Remove 1 condi per ally & Renew energy 2 init————-24s CD
Shadowstep – Tele 1200 range Tele back -3 condis --————— 50s CD
Basilisk Venom- 1.5s Channel 1.5sec stone to target on hit —-————kitten CD

Traits init boost as of PRE DEC 10th

+2 init per stealth (32 init per 60 secs)
+2 init per signet 20% cooldown reduction on signets (9 init per 60 secs)
+3 init per steal (roughly 6 init per 60 secs)
+1 init per crit per 1 sec (CD) (roughly 16 init per 60 secs)
+2 init per 10 secs (12 init per 60 secs)
+.75 init per second base regen (45 init per 60 secs)
TOTAL= 120 initiative gained per an average 60 sec fight

Traits init boost as of POST DEC 10th

+2 init per stealth (20 init per 10 secs)
+1 init per signet 20% cooldown reduction on signets (4 init per 60 secs)
+2 init per steal (roughly 4 init per 60 secs)
+1 init per crit per 5 sec (CD) (roughly 8 init per 60 secs)
+1 init per 10 secs (6 init per 60 secs)
+1 init per sec base regen (60 init per 60 secs
TOTAL= 102 initiative gained per an average 60 sec fight

TOTAL DIFFERENCE = 18 init per 60 secs

THE CHANGES are basically -3 init per 10 seconds for thief POST dec 10th.

If we pretend that nobody is stacking stealth for extra init….then its only roughly about a difference of -1 init per 10 secs loss.

I fail to see how this is beneficial or at least even?