Guild Wars 2

Dekk.3459:

TheBandit.7031:

vincecontix.1264:

TheBandit.7031:

I just don’t understand why the thief needs this kind of buff. This will allow them to be way more mobile too, and classes like the elementalist constantly have their mobility nerfed but thieves get it buffed. Even now there’s no one that can catch a thief or out kite them.

The thing is you don’t understand the thiefs current most viable/popular meta builds(dp sd) are not getting buffed due to the nerf to all the thief initiative regen traits . Lots of thief specs that went heavy into CS line will be lucky to break even after this patch. The changes with initiative will tone down the thiefs stronger specs and buff up the weaker ones. So overall after the patch the thief will most likely be weaker esp if you take into account the heavy nerf on our vigor uptime.

You are obviously not a thief player and don’t have a good understanding of thief traits or builds. So please don’t come in and post things out of ignorance.

I mentioned nothing about about them being more powerful. I was only talking about mobility. I referenced the elementalist because they used to have a good ability to escape, which was taken down a good notch. With more initiate you’ll simply be able to use more escapes, therefore escaping more easily. And there escape mechanisms are not being nerfed. You’re completely right about what you said, I’m sure they won’t be any better in combat. I just can’t seem to figure out if anet wants more or less mobility.

You obviously do not understand the changes. The ‘on-demand’ initiative gain is getting cut in half. So a thief will now have to decide go-all-in for attacks or to reserve initiative for defense. Meanwhile other classes have that one weapon skill used for defense that has always been there. It is a more limiting change then you realize.

Ah the way I read it it seemed like it was a pure increase so that thieves didn’t need to get extra initiative regen.

Imagi.4561:

JonPeters.5630:

You can still avoid follow ups with this. 360 milliseconds is faster than almost any attack and certainly faster than almost all dangerous ones. The only loss here is using this while stunned and using it to teleport finish an opponent.

Would you be able to tell us how it was being used to teleport finish? I’ve played S/D since betas and I never used it this way, so clearly I was missing something.

Start Finish > Return (safe area) > Steal, Inf signet, shadowstep back to land the finisher

JonPeters.5630:

Sondergaard.8469:

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.)

No, no, no, and no. The reason I absolutely am 100% against this change is the entire thief class is built around the idea that abilities are instant with no cast time with no cooldown (on weapon skills), because they are the only class with a resource pool for their abilities. Make it cost more initiative or give a debuff that slows down initiative gain. Reduce the damage, change the range, etc etc… I don’t care about that. What bothers me is the adding a cast time to a class who’s core mechanic is all about no cooldowns and being able to quickly maneuver around.

I’m not sure what you mean by instant, but this is currently the only instant weapon ability. We are not adding a HUGE cast time to this skill. This skill is going to have a 360 millisecond cast time. ~1/3 of a second.

Jon

I think he is just getting cool down and cast time mixed up.
Even so, if it had no cast time and you just couldn’t use it while you were disabled or in the middle of an action. That would still be a hard hit for the Mh sword.

He does bring up a point about trying to limit this in some other way without that cast time. Has the decision on this skill already been set in stone?

JonPeters.5630:

You can still avoid follow ups with this. 360 milliseconds is faster than almost any attack and certainly faster than almost all dangerous ones. The only loss here is using this while stunned and using it to teleport finish an opponent.

Other than using it for stomps, wouldn’t protection against stuns be the best way to use it?

Imagi.4561:

JonPeters.5630:

You can still avoid follow ups with this. 360 milliseconds is faster than almost any attack and certainly faster than almost all dangerous ones. The only loss here is using this while stunned and using it to teleport finish an opponent.

Would you be able to tell us how it was being used to teleport finish? I’ve played S/D since betas and I never used it this way, so clearly I was missing something.

There are a few ways for this:
1)Down enemy
2)Precast Inflitrators Strike
3)Press F
4)Teleport to another close by enemy somwhere near with either Steal or Infli Signet
5)Wait a Moment
6)Use Shadow Return

Might be usefull against a Guardian if you don’t have Shadowstep, or when it’s
on cool down, since the Blind from Tactical Strike isn’t as reliable.

Hey Jon,
Are there any plans to give thieves more condi removal In the future? Thieves rely pretty heavily on the shadow arts tree to get condi removal, and while it isn’t too bad of a problem I’m tpvp, In worried about wvw. I’m wondering if a trait In acrobatics that removes condi on dodge rolling (with an ICD) would be a good idea? The 10/30/0/0/30 D/P shortbow build that I, and many others, run In tpvp is getting a pretty sizable buff with the extra initiative (and a small nerf to vigor from bountiful theft), so I don’t think it would be wise to add condi removal to trickery or crit strikes or we will have an overpowered spec. Another possibility would be to normalize the condi removed by the signet of agility. Maybe make it remove 3 condi regardless of teammates?

Just some thoughts I had as a tourney and WvW player.
Edit: I’m on my phone so pardon any mistakes

Imagi.4561:

JonPeters.5630:

You can still avoid follow ups with this. 360 milliseconds is faster than almost any attack and certainly faster than almost all dangerous ones. The only loss here is using this while stunned and using it to teleport finish an opponent.

Would you be able to tell us how it was being used to teleport finish? I’ve played S/D since betas and I never used it this way, so clearly I was missing something.

using infiltrator strike to create a port Point ,
if the enemy goes down mode now on some other Point but not enough neabry
and the small phenomen success you try to stomp and he gets for some Kind of else reason (he ported/mistform/warri stomped) near to your port Point you created, you can press shadowreturn of the sword skill and you will finish him off by only using sword 2

Walker.3056:

Start Finish > Return (safe area) > Steal, Inf signet, shadowstep back to land the finisher

Cyhann.2609:

There are a few ways for this:
1)Down enemy
2)Precast Inflitrators Strike
3)Press F
4)Teleport to another close by enemy somwhere near with either Steal or Infli Signet
5)Wait a Moment
6)Use Shadow Return

Might be usefull against a Guardian if you don’t have Shadowstep, or when it’s
on cool down, since the Blind from Tactical Strike isn’t as reliable.

But but of those methods require preparation and/or burning Steal or one of your utilities. Did this really make the sword teleport that problematic that it needs to have the instacast taken away?

And it still sounds like less of a guaranteed stomp than the safety that Black Powder or Blinding Powder can provide.

Imagi.4561:

JonPeters.5630:

You can still avoid follow ups with this. 360 milliseconds is faster than almost any attack and certainly faster than almost all dangerous ones. The only loss here is using this while stunned and using it to teleport finish an opponent.

Would you be able to tell us how it was being used to teleport finish? I’ve played S/D since betas and I never used it this way, so clearly I was missing something.

Yes I keep seeing this referenced as a reason for the change, but I have no idea how it’s done? I think you may be referring to Shadow Step/Shadow Return. However, I don’t feel Shadow Step is OP at all, we have to burn our long CD stunbreaker (usually the only stun break we run on our utils) to accomplish this stomp.

Oghier.7419:

You’re making a lot of changes to initiative regen. I assume you guys have done the math, and you’re being accurate when you say builds that don’t currently make use of the +initiative traits will get a boost. For a typical crit-power build, however, I wonder how the nerf to Opportunist will balance this out. I wish I could parse the combat logs, so I could tell how much regen I am getting from it now.

A P/P thief min/maxed to chain Unloads full throttle will gain around 4.75 initiative per 10 seconds from Opportunist in its current iteration; if the proposed nerf goes through, this will be reduced to about 1.75 initiative per 10 seconds.

A more conservative, D/D thief using a standard PvE rotation will be dropping from around 2.75 initiative per 10 now to 1.5 per 10 after.

If you made good use of Opportunist before these changes take effect, you can expect to have less initiative after this patch regardless of where you spent the rest of your trait points. That trait is a font of initiative for high performance PvE thieves and they’re taking a sledgehammer to it.

JonPeters.5630:

Maugetarr.6823:

JonPeters.5630:

Sondergaard.8469:

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.)

No, no, no, and no. The reason I absolutely am 100% against this change is the entire thief class is built around the idea that abilities are instant with no cast time with no cooldown (on weapon skills), because they are the only class with a resource pool for their abilities. Make it cost more initiative or give a debuff that slows down initiative gain. Reduce the damage, change the range, etc etc… I don’t care about that. What bothers me is the adding a cast time to a class who’s core mechanic is all about no cooldowns and being able to quickly maneuver around.

I’m not sure what you mean by instant, but this is currently the only instant weapon ability. We are not adding a HUGE cast time to this skill. This skill is going to have a 360 millisecond cast time. ~1/3 of a second.

Jon

With no access to stability (other than a 90 second elite) the ability to avoid the following hit if you had a good enough reaction time seemed like part of the design of the sword. It currently doesn’t break stuns anymore, just moves you (possibly) out of range. Would you be adversed to the idea of making the return in the 600-450 range instead of putting a cast time on it so that the immediate next (melee) hit can avoided while it does not completely remove pressure from you?

You can still avoid follow ups with this. 360 milliseconds is faster than almost any attack and certainly faster than almost all dangerous ones. The only loss here is using this while stunned and using it to teleport finish an opponent.

Jon, can you please explain this further? As I understand it, you cannot cast IR while stunned. You must wait till the stun ends before starting the 1/3 second cast. So, it won’t get a thief out of harms way in 1/3 second… it’ll get the thief away several seconds after the stun in some cases. Am I correct? It will no longer help us avoid a follow up eviscerate after a shield bash. The way you said that almost implies you can cast it even while stunned but now we wait 1/3 sec instead of it being instant.

The return on sword is mainly used to avoid follow up damage after stuns, to help get a stomp off, and to completely disengage from a fight. The former 2 were the most common and they’re being taken away. We don’t want to run from fights we want to have enough sustainability to stay in and have a chance to win.

Imagi.4561:

Walker.3056:

Start Finish > Return (safe area) > Steal, Inf signet, shadowstep back to land the finisher

Cyhann.2609:

There are a few ways for this:
1)Down enemy
2)Precast Inflitrators Strike
3)Press F
4)Teleport to another close by enemy somwhere near with either Steal or Infli Signet
5)Wait a Moment
6)Use Shadow Return

Might be usefull against a Guardian if you don’t have Shadowstep, or when it’s
on cool down, since the Blind from Tactical Strike isn’t as reliable.

But but of those methods require preparation and/or burning Steal or one of your utilities. Did this really make the sword teleport that problematic that it needs to have the instacast taken away?

And it still sounds like less of a guaranteed stomp than the safety that Black Powder or Blinding Powder can provide.

The only thing black powder can’t provide is protection against carpet bombing down targets.
Keeping in mind we can still teleport stomp, with shadow step, but we are still giving up a utility/actual stun break to do.

BobbyT.7192:

The only thing black powder can’t provide is protection against carpet bombing down targets.
Keeping in mind we can still teleport stomp, with shadow step, but we are still giving up a utility/actual stun break to do.

From what I understand, using IS requires using a utility anyways, or burning your Steal.

But inability to avoid the damaging followup of the stun? If I am using a stun breaker that WOULD let me avoid the damaging followup, what is the reason for infiltrators return to exist at this point? If now I would need to blow an utility anyway regardless of what spec, weapon set and situation I am in. For example, a venom share thief can run exclusively S/P, in some cases S/D effectively. Solely because it is the sword that provides it with the otherwise non-existent survive ability.

JonPeters.5630:

You can still avoid follow ups with this. 360 milliseconds is faster than almost any attack and certainly faster than almost all dangerous ones.

Oh that sounds good.

The only loss here is using this while stunned and using it to teleport finish an opponent.

“while stunned”…what did you think was happening before the “follow up” we don’t want to eat and you claim we can still avoid?

Don’t even start with the teleport finish witch hunt. Any way about it, you’re burning a utility or steal to achieve this, and it isn’t even as effective as stability, Elixir S, or Distortion stomps.

JonPeters.5630:

Imagi.4561:

BobbyT.7192:

The only thing black powder can’t provide is protection against carpet bombing down targets.
Keeping in mind we can still teleport stomp, with shadow step, but we are still giving up a utility/actual stun break to do.

From what I understand, using IS requires using a utility anyways, or burning your Steal.

Yeah you burn your steal (35-20s cooldown) with it, instead of burning shadowstep (50-40s cooldown.)

Jon

and that’s so powerful it needs to be nerfed?

Steal can be a huge part of a number of builds, depending on how you’re spec’d. It can
-Heal, do damage, and poison
-trigger Might/Fury/swiftness
-restore initiative
-trigger stealth

and sacrificing all that versatility (not claiming all those abilities happen when you steal, just that you can specc’d for some of them) for a stomp, plus 5 initiative is so strong it needs to be nerfed? On the only class that can’t go immune, with no access to stability, and the lowest base Health pool in the game?

I mean, this sounds extremely anti-thief to me.

And, in example above, I taken into consideration 1 sec icd on current opportunist as well as THE MOST pessimistic scenario on 30% proc. I could probably account on the delay of the proc but that is way below of 5% error margin. Like I said, I am interested only in answer to “was P/P and S/P considered in this change and how?” I not that much against the change itself.

JonPeters.5630:

Maugetarr.6823:

JonPeters.5630:

Sondergaard.8469:

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.)

No, no, no, and no. The reason I absolutely am 100% against this change is the entire thief class is built around the idea that abilities are instant with no cast time with no cooldown (on weapon skills), because they are the only class with a resource pool for their abilities. Make it cost more initiative or give a debuff that slows down initiative gain. Reduce the damage, change the range, etc etc… I don’t care about that. What bothers me is the adding a cast time to a class who’s core mechanic is all about no cooldowns and being able to quickly maneuver around.

I’m not sure what you mean by instant, but this is currently the only instant weapon ability. We are not adding a HUGE cast time to this skill. This skill is going to have a 360 millisecond cast time. ~1/3 of a second.

Jon

With no access to stability (other than a 90 second elite) the ability to avoid the following hit if you had a good enough reaction time seemed like part of the design of the sword. It currently doesn’t break stuns anymore, just moves you (possibly) out of range. Would you be adversed to the idea of making the return in the 600-450 range instead of putting a cast time on it so that the immediate next (melee) hit can avoided while it does not completely remove pressure from you?

You can still avoid follow ups with this. 360 milliseconds is faster than almost any attack and certainly faster than almost all dangerous ones. The only loss here is using this while stunned and using it to teleport finish an opponent.

yep! so in sum you are basically removing the only usefulness of this ability and making it a gap closer, no one will hit that button again until it switches back to Infiltrator’s Strike.

Why not remove the shadow return all together? it would be just another Shadow Shot with a insignificant imob instead of the blind… It would be alot more usefull then the new (worse) shadow return.

evilapprentice.6379:

JonPeters.5630:

Imagi.4561:

BobbyT.7192:

The only thing black powder can’t provide is protection against carpet bombing down targets.
Keeping in mind we can still teleport stomp, with shadow step, but we are still giving up a utility/actual stun break to do.

From what I understand, using IS requires using a utility anyways, or burning your Steal.

Yeah you burn your steal (35-20s cooldown) with it, instead of burning shadowstep (50-40s cooldown.)

Jon

and that’s so powerful it needs to be nerfed?

Steal can be a huge part of a number of builds, depending on how you’re spec’d. It can
-Heal, do damage, and poison
-trigger Might/Fury/swiftness
-restore initiative
-trigger stealth

and sacrificing all that versatility (not claiming all those abilities happen when you steal, just that you can specc’d for some of them) for a stomp, plus 5 initiative is so strong it needs to be nerfed? On the only class that can’t go immune, with no access to stability, and the lowest base Health pool in the game?

I mean, this sounds extremely anti-thief to me.

my understanding from all this is that teleport stomp is not the reason for the nerf, it’s just an unfortunate casualty.

Sigh… so I guess no matter what we say can make them change their minds about Shadow Return – the skill that was making sword like 3 times more fun to play (at least to me and I have never used SR stomps). Everyone playing sword mainhand knows we have to go (almost)full glass to be able to put pressure with our damage and that’s why… ah forget it, why am I even trying, back to leveling my new project. Rifle/longbow full troll roaming warrior might be fun.

Pavel.8531:

Sigh… so I guess no matter what we say can make them change their minds about Shadow Return – the skill that was making sword like 3 times more fun to play (at least to me and I have never used SR stomps). Everyone playing sword mainhand knows we have to go (almost)full glass to be able to put pressure with our damage and that’s why… ah forget it, why am I even trying, back to leveling my new project. Rifle/longbow full troll roaming warrior might be fun.

It’s sad knowing a bad change is coming and you can’t do anything to stop it.

JonPeters.5630:

Imagi.4561:

BobbyT.7192:

The only thing black powder can’t provide is protection against carpet bombing down targets.
Keeping in mind we can still teleport stomp, with shadow step, but we are still giving up a utility/actual stun break to do.

From what I understand, using IS requires using a utility anyways, or burning your Steal.

Yeah you burn your steal (35-20s cooldown) with it, instead of burning shadowstep (50-40s cooldown.)

Jon

While I appreciate your answer and I can understand the reasoning, the IS stomp still requires more preparation than it’s counterpart. And, as evilapprentice pointed out, you are sacrificing whatever capabilities that Steal provides.

Not to mention that if you have Shadowstep traited but not Steal—which is how my build was in a previous setup—the difference in cooldown is only 5s.

Jon, I really appreciate all the attention you’ve paid to all the concerns on the board. Unfortunately, I haven’t really seen a well reasoned or convincing response to the Infiltrators return changes.

Can we please talk about the IR changes? They’re by far the most important, because they potentially cut TPvP thieves viable weaponsets down to D/P SB….and thats it. That’s huge, and terrifying.

I think this thread has generated a ton of good counterpoints, and I’d like to hear your thought process concerning them.

BobbyT.7192:

my understanding from all this is that teleport stomp is not the reason for the nerf, it’s just an unfortunate casualty.

From the front page, quoting verbatim. Bold mine, for emphasis

JonPeters.5630:

Infiltrator’s Return
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.)

And a note, suggesting a thief carry pistol OH shows a startling lack of meta knowledge for a developer – thieves run Sbow offhand in TPvP, because its basically a requirement. Thieves are roamers…and that’s it – there is no effective roaming without SBow

So it comes down to promoting defensive/passive play again?
If before you used IR to get away from certain death, now you use it to remove conditions and get out of combat? And wait for ini to passively regen with the new, boosted regen?
Same thing with opportunist.
You got more initiative by attacking more, and now it will come to getting more initiative while not attacking?

Jon replied to one of my posts confirming they think sword thieves will still be viable in tpvp. So, I think sword will eventually see other buffs ~6 months down the road when they realize it is not viable. Maybe it’ll be like nerfing mug only to buff it with a reduced steal CD. It’ll be a boring 6 months though.

JonPeters.5630:

Volrath.1473:

JonPeters.5630:

Maugetarr.6823:

JonPeters.5630:

Sondergaard.8469:

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.)

No, no, no, and no. The reason I absolutely am 100% against this change is the entire thief class is built around the idea that abilities are instant with no cast time with no cooldown (on weapon skills), because they are the only class with a resource pool for their abilities. Make it cost more initiative or give a debuff that slows down initiative gain. Reduce the damage, change the range, etc etc… I don’t care about that. What bothers me is the adding a cast time to a class who’s core mechanic is all about no cooldowns and being able to quickly maneuver around.

I’m not sure what you mean by instant, but this is currently the only instant weapon ability. We are not adding a HUGE cast time to this skill. This skill is going to have a 360 millisecond cast time. ~1/3 of a second.

Jon

With no access to stability (other than a 90 second elite) the ability to avoid the following hit if you had a good enough reaction time seemed like part of the design of the sword. It currently doesn’t break stuns anymore, just moves you (possibly) out of range. Would you be adversed to the idea of making the return in the 600-450 range instead of putting a cast time on it so that the immediate next (melee) hit can avoided while it does not completely remove pressure from you?

You can still avoid follow ups with this. 360 milliseconds is faster than almost any attack and certainly faster than almost all dangerous ones. The only loss here is using this while stunned and using it to teleport finish an opponent.

yep! so in sum you are basically removing the only usefulness of this ability and making it a gap closer, no one will hit that button again until it switches back to Infiltrator’s Strike.

Why not remove the shadow return all together? it would be just another Shadow Shot with a insignificant imob instead of the blind… It would be alot more usefull then the new (worse) shadow return.

It is currently for 3 initiative:

• gap closer
• 1s immob

for 2 more initiative:

• escape when not stunned
• remove 1 condition

With the new base regen that means you can gap close and immobilize and remove a condition every 5 seconds. Even if you spread that initiative over 4 skill slots that skill can be used every 20 seconds.

Jon

Please respond to some of the more serious, well reasoned arguments concerning this change. There have been a dozen solid arguments as to why this is a bad idea, which take into consideration how S/D is forced to Spec and gear if it wants to remain effective, and also how thief was designed as part of the lowest Base HP pool in the game, with no way to block, go immune or psuedo-immune, no access to protection or stability.

Hey Jon, can you comment on the possibility of changing Hard to Catch before dropping it down a tier?

Right now it’s just not a trait worth using, even in Master Tier. The fact that you can’t predict when it triggers means it is more likely to get you into trouble than out of it. A key example would be the trait triggering while you are in Shadow Refuge, moving you out of it and revealing you while before you may have just been knocked down or stunned. Another key example would be it moving you away from a downed target you are trying to stomp causing you to fail the stomp, even if you negated their disable with stability.

There’s also the fact that it doesn’t get rid of the disable used on you. If you’re stunned for 3 seconds, you’re going to be stunned for 3 seconds with or without the trait and will have to use a stun breaker regardless. The swiftness doesn’t help compensate for that either since you lose swiftness duration while you’re disabled as well. In it’s current state it is just not worth taking and moving it to Master tier isn’t going to change that.

JonPeters.5630:

I’m not sure what you mean by instant, but this is currently the only instant weapon ability. We are not adding a HUGE cast time to this skill. This skill is going to have a 360 millisecond cast time. ~1/3 of a second.

Jon

You are wrong. Mesmer Staff 2 “Phase Retreat” does the exact same thing as Sword 2.
Our skill might,if you try to find an equivalent of initiative vs CD, than Sword might have a lower CD but to say no other weapon ability does this is tells me a lot about ANET.

On another note, if i was able to see all the stuns that are coming my way when i fight, than sure a 360 mili second cast time is more than enough but i have dodges for that (oh wait, thats being “tone” down) why would i burn initiative when i could use well timed dodges?

If you want to change this skill give us some sort of stability (adding stability on hard to catch fyi is not very useful cuze it will simply burn the up time of the stab to run back to the enemy) If i can do like so many other profession and run across kitten and stay in a fight “immune” to dmg and CC than ok take away our dodge and other skills you claim OP but by that point i might as well run warrior

As for gap closer, it is not a very good one if you compare it to shadow shot, it closes the gap but if they decide to keep backing off, than the skill becomes a crutch

How about a change of topic?
What does the balance team think of the “Hard to Catch” and its sister traits “Last Refuge” and “Instinctual Response”. I say sister traits because as far as i’m aware, these seem to be the only traits in the game that can get you killed. Traits that can effect you position without your control, or put you in a revealed state by accident isn’t really well design imo.

Enenion.8127:

Hey Jon, can you comment on the possibility of changing Hard to Catch before dropping it down a tier?

Right now it’s just not a trait worth using, even in Master Tier. The fact that you can’t predict when it triggers means it is more likely to get you into trouble than out of it. A key example would be the trait triggering while you are in Shadow Refuge, moving you out of it and revealing you while before you may have just been knocked down or stunned. Another key example would be it moving you away from a downed target you are trying to stomp causing you to fail the stomp, even if you negated their disable with stability.

There’s also the fact that it doesn’t get rid of the disable used on you. If you’re stunned for 3 seconds, you’re going to be stunned for 3 seconds with or without the trait and will have to use a stun breaker regardless. The swiftness doesn’t help compensate for that either since you lose swiftness duration while you’re disabled as well. In it’s current state it is just not worth taking and moving it to Master tier isn’t going to change that.

1 more point, im pretty sure, but havent tested it in a while but if you do get disabled with this trait and have stability you still get teleported but you will have to test it out to find out

Hype.8032:

Jon replied to one of my posts confirming they think sword thieves will still be viable in tpvp. So, I think sword will eventually see other buffs ~6 months down the road when they realize it is not viable. Maybe it’ll be like nerfing mug only to buff it with a reduced steal CD. It’ll be a boring 6 months though.

None of us will still be here in 6 months if this change goes through. Even the most hardcore supporters will get bored with D/P – Sbow being the only option for serious play rather quickly (IMO of course). If there are future sword changes down the line, save this change for when those are ready.

I agree that S/D CAN work with the proposed IR change…if a bunch of other sword abilities are also tweaked. As proposed, it’ll ruin S/D til those changes even have the potential to bring it back up.

JonPeters.5630:

Volrath.1473:

JonPeters.5630:

Maugetarr.6823:

JonPeters.5630:

Sondergaard.8469:

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.)

No, no, no, and no. The reason I absolutely am 100% against this change is the entire thief class is built around the idea that abilities are instant with no cast time with no cooldown (on weapon skills), because they are the only class with a resource pool for their abilities. Make it cost more initiative or give a debuff that slows down initiative gain. Reduce the damage, change the range, etc etc… I don’t care about that. What bothers me is the adding a cast time to a class who’s core mechanic is all about no cooldowns and being able to quickly maneuver around.

I’m not sure what you mean by instant, but this is currently the only instant weapon ability. We are not adding a HUGE cast time to this skill. This skill is going to have a 360 millisecond cast time. ~1/3 of a second.

Jon

With no access to stability (other than a 90 second elite) the ability to avoid the following hit if you had a good enough reaction time seemed like part of the design of the sword. It currently doesn’t break stuns anymore, just moves you (possibly) out of range. Would you be adversed to the idea of making the return in the 600-450 range instead of putting a cast time on it so that the immediate next (melee) hit can avoided while it does not completely remove pressure from you?

You can still avoid follow ups with this. 360 milliseconds is faster than almost any attack and certainly faster than almost all dangerous ones. The only loss here is using this while stunned and using it to teleport finish an opponent.

yep! so in sum you are basically removing the only usefulness of this ability and making it a gap closer, no one will hit that button again until it switches back to Infiltrator’s Strike.

Why not remove the shadow return all together? it would be just another Shadow Shot with a insignificant imob instead of the blind… It would be alot more usefull then the new (worse) shadow return.

It is currently for 3 initiative:

• gap closer
• 1s immob

for 2 more initiative:

• escape when not stunned
• remove 1 condition

With the new base regen that means you can gap close and immobilize and remove a condition every 5 seconds. Even if you spread that initiative over 4 skill slots that skill can be used every 20 seconds.

Jon

In a meta that encourages tank condi specs that allow players to let the conditions do the work for them without having to sacrifice going into toughness/vitality, removing a single condition where people are applying 3+ at a time while soaking up your damage is negligible, especially compared to being able to minimize damage from being stunned on a class with the lowest health pool and defensive boon access.

EDIT: Oh, and let us not forget mesmer staff #2

JonPeters.5630:

Let’s break down this thief change a bit more so we can dispel any notions that this is going to ruin thieves.

For sPvP, you’re probably ruining thieves with the Shadow Return nerf. Mainhand dagger doesn’t matter in the tank meta, and sword is losing all the tools it needed to not die in a fight. That isn’t saying that this isn’t going to be for the best in the long run, but the class is probably going to be trash tier for several months until you figure out how to make it work.

The initiative changes are pretty blah. Opportunist is a group PvE powerhouse on a generally weak PvE class, but it’s a pretty forgettable trait in PvP; the change you’re making is going to sledgehammer it in PvE and not have much of an effect on PvP. Honestly I’m more annoyed that it continues the trend of poor proc design than any power level concerns (precision is a sub-par stat in your game because you balanced it around procs, then sledgehammered all the procs) and it’s a step backward in fixing that problem in the long run. Cutting the proc chance in half would be a whole lot healthier than this proposal, for what it’s worth.

Most of the other traits hits you decided on feel bad simply because there isn’t a whole lot you can do about them; you’ll still end up taking the traits and feel bad about it. It’s not like I’m going to stop putting 30 points into Critical Strikes because you nerfed Opportunist; it wasn’t a big part of a PvP spec anyway, and the alternative is not being able to kill things. Ripping a bunch of power off of Quick Recovery doesn’t encourage me to experiment with different traits in an Acrobatics build, because nothing else in the line does anything – you’ll just suck it up and run bad Quick Recovery. Kleptomaniac was a nice bonus for investing 30 points into Trickery, now it’s basically garbage unless you put 30 points into Trickery.

…and so forth. Again, it’s not a disagreement with the design direction. I agree with the design intent 100%. It’s more that these changes look, well, like a first pass alpha draft, and I’d hope to see significant refinement of these concepts before they’re pushed to live.

JonPeters.5630:

Volrath.1473:

JonPeters.5630:

Maugetarr.6823:

JonPeters.5630:

Sondergaard.8469:

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.)

No, no, no, and no. The reason I absolutely am 100% against this change is the entire thief class is built around the idea that abilities are instant with no cast time with no cooldown (on weapon skills), because they are the only class with a resource pool for their abilities. Make it cost more initiative or give a debuff that slows down initiative gain. Reduce the damage, change the range, etc etc… I don’t care about that. What bothers me is the adding a cast time to a class who’s core mechanic is all about no cooldowns and being able to quickly maneuver around.

I’m not sure what you mean by instant, but this is currently the only instant weapon ability. We are not adding a HUGE cast time to this skill. This skill is going to have a 360 millisecond cast time. ~1/3 of a second.

Jon

With no access to stability (other than a 90 second elite) the ability to avoid the following hit if you had a good enough reaction time seemed like part of the design of the sword. It currently doesn’t break stuns anymore, just moves you (possibly) out of range. Would you be adversed to the idea of making the return in the 600-450 range instead of putting a cast time on it so that the immediate next (melee) hit can avoided while it does not completely remove pressure from you?

You can still avoid follow ups with this. 360 milliseconds is faster than almost any attack and certainly faster than almost all dangerous ones. The only loss here is using this while stunned and using it to teleport finish an opponent.

yep! so in sum you are basically removing the only usefulness of this ability and making it a gap closer, no one will hit that button again until it switches back to Infiltrator’s Strike.

Why not remove the shadow return all together? it would be just another Shadow Shot with a insignificant imob instead of the blind… It would be alot more usefull then the new (worse) shadow return.

It is currently for 3 initiative:

• gap closer
• 1s immob

for 2 more initiative:

• escape when not stunned
• remove 1 condition

With the new base regen that means you can gap close and immobilize and remove a condition every 5 seconds. Even if you spread that initiative over 4 skill slots that skill can be used every 20 seconds.

Jon

Do you think this will lead to more 3 spam in an effort to avoid getting hit in the first place? In conjunction with the vigor nerf it seems thief defenses are being lowered across the board.

Ensign.2189:

JonPeters.5630:

Let’s break down this thief change a bit more so we can dispel any notions that this is going to ruin thieves.

For sPvP, you’re probably ruining thieves with the Shadow Return nerf. Mainhand dagger doesn’t matter in the tank meta, and sword is losing all the tools it needed to not die in a fight. That isn’t saying that this isn’t going to be for the best in the long run, but the class is probably going to be trash tier for several months until you figure out how to make it work.

The initiative changes are pretty blah. Opportunist is a group PvE powerhouse on a generally weak PvE class, but it’s a pretty forgettable trait in PvP; the change you’re making is going to sledgehammer it in PvE and not have much of an effect on PvP. Honestly I’m more annoyed that it continues the trend of poor proc design than any power level concerns (precision is a sub-par stat in your game because you balanced it around procs, then sledgehammered all the procs) and it’s a step backward in fixing that problem in the long run. Cutting the proc chance in half would be a whole lot healthier than this proposal, for what it’s worth.

Most of the other traits hits you decided on feel bad simply because there isn’t a whole lot you can do about them; you’ll still end up taking the traits and feel bad about it. It’s not like I’m going to stop putting 30 points into Critical Strikes because you nerfed Opportunist; it wasn’t a big part of a PvP spec anyway, and the alternative is not being able to kill things. Ripping a bunch of power off of Quick Recovery doesn’t encourage me to experiment with different traits in an Acrobatics build, because nothing else in the line does anything – you’ll just suck it up and run bad Quick Recovery. Kleptomaniac was a nice bonus for investing 30 points into Trickery, now it’s basically garbage unless you put 30 points into Trickery.

…and so forth. Again, it’s not a disagreement with the design direction. I agree with the design intent 100%. It’s more that these changes look, well, like a first pass alpha draft, and I’d hope to see significant refinement of these concepts before they’re pushed to live.

What he said. Was there ever a round table where all the solutions were listed and considered in orderly and constructive manner? If you don’t have enough time I am pretty sure you would at least have some to read a bit of the work that community can do FOR you and BETTER than you. Simply because there is more of us

I am pretty confident that with a simple request ANET could get a well formed, immense and organized priority list with all kinds of details from a community in several days. On every topic in existence.

Dropping Trickster down is going to be tricky (heh); it is not a good trait, and there are already several solid Major Adept traits available. Bountiful Theft is better than all of them by leaps and bounds, so whatever you promote to master is going on the scrap heap; at the same time it’s not going to see a lot of play since there are better options available.

The only safe swap would be moving Instinctual Response up to master, then ripping it out of the game at a later date when you have a better idea for a trait. The rest all have value, and swapping them out for Trickster would likely do more harm to build variety than good.

JonPeters.5630:

Volrath.1473:

JonPeters.5630:

Maugetarr.6823:

JonPeters.5630:

Sondergaard.8469:

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.)

No, no, no, and no. The reason I absolutely am 100% against this change is the entire thief class is built around the idea that abilities are instant with no cast time with no cooldown (on weapon skills), because they are the only class with a resource pool for their abilities. Make it cost more initiative or give a debuff that slows down initiative gain. Reduce the damage, change the range, etc etc… I don’t care about that. What bothers me is the adding a cast time to a class who’s core mechanic is all about no cooldowns and being able to quickly maneuver around.

I’m not sure what you mean by instant, but this is currently the only instant weapon ability. We are not adding a HUGE cast time to this skill. This skill is going to have a 360 millisecond cast time. ~1/3 of a second.

Jon

With no access to stability (other than a 90 second elite) the ability to avoid the following hit if you had a good enough reaction time seemed like part of the design of the sword. It currently doesn’t break stuns anymore, just moves you (possibly) out of range. Would you be adversed to the idea of making the return in the 600-450 range instead of putting a cast time on it so that the immediate next (melee) hit can avoided while it does not completely remove pressure from you?

You can still avoid follow ups with this. 360 milliseconds is faster than almost any attack and certainly faster than almost all dangerous ones. The only loss here is using this while stunned and using it to teleport finish an opponent.

yep! so in sum you are basically removing the only usefulness of this ability and making it a gap closer, no one will hit that button again until it switches back to Infiltrator’s Strike.

Why not remove the shadow return all together? it would be just another Shadow Shot with a insignificant imob instead of the blind… It would be alot more usefull then the new (worse) shadow return.

It is currently for 3 initiative:

• gap closer
• 1s immob

for 2 more initiative:

• escape when not stunned
• remove 1 condition

With the new base regen that means you can gap close and immobilize and remove a condition every 5 seconds. Even if you spread that initiative over 4 skill slots that skill can be used every 20 seconds.

Jon

That 1s immobilize isn’t worth ____ , and the gap closer already had the range reduced. So it is basically one condition removal after this proposed change. If the thief is supposed to be the most agile then increase the range. Or have it remove 2 conditions.

And again please change the randomness of Hard to Catch to offset the sword ability to get out of trouble. Every other class has a viable trait that breaks CC. Hard to Catch does not break the CC, transports (or tries to) some random place, and is usually detrimental.

Edit: Both of the other leather classes have 2 traits to deal with disables. Thief one and it has issues

Pavel.8531:

Sigh… so I guess no matter what we say can make them change their minds about Shadow Return – the skill that was making sword like 3 times more fun to play (at least to me and I have never used SR stomps). Everyone playing sword mainhand knows we have to go (almost)full glass to be able to put pressure with our damage and that’s why… ah forget it, why am I even trying, back to leveling my new project. Rifle/longbow full troll roaming warrior might be fun.

I can feel your pain.
As someone in another post stated:
the remedy to the thief sword “balance” is to ROLL A WARRIOR.
or something like that.
What the game designers don’t understand: Some people NEVER WvW;
just PvE and dungeons. They balance for WvW and make a build or even
a profession sub-par in PvE.

I think Jon is off work for the night

Reading the posts in this thread is like watching a a car accident.

It’s just a thought, but developers might be more willing to come to the Thief forum and deliver feedback if posters don’t try to typographically firebomb their loved ones and eat their heart.

JonPeters.5630:

It is currently for 3 initiative:

• gap closer
• 1s immob

for 2 more initiative:

• escape when not stunned
• remove 1 condition

With the new base regen that means you can gap close and immobilize and remove a condition every 5 seconds. Even if you spread that initiative over 4 skill slots that skill can be used every 20 seconds.

Jon

It’s an initial gap closer with 600 range (Warrior, Elementalist and Ranger have 1200 and 1100 range gap closers) so generally you have to combine it with steal or a utility to actually close the gap. 1 condition removed every 5 seconds on a universal cool-down, which isn’t crazy considering thief’s lack of condition cleanse options.

With the nerf you’ll obviously be losing the escape when not stunned function, you’ll also be losing the ability to use it as a dodge, yes 1/3rd of a second isn’t long (I thought you originally listed 1/4?) but keep in mind dodge is instant. Thief is currently the squishiest class as we have no stability (outside of cancelling an elite), lowest tiered HP pool, very few condition removals, no protection, no aegis and no regeneration outside of stealth spec builds and a 30s ICD trait (Pain Response). IR nerf coupled with the vigor nerf is just asking for thieves to be free kills for the majority of classes honestly.

If you add any cast time add like a .01s cast time so it’s still instant, but can’t be used while stunned and give us more access to stun breaks or stability, otherwise I truly believe that his change will ruin sword MH as many have stated.

KaiserCX.7103:

JonPeters.5630:

It is currently for 3 initiative:

• gap closer
• 1s immob

for 2 more initiative:

• escape when not stunned
• remove 1 condition

With the new base regen that means you can gap close and immobilize and remove a condition every 5 seconds. Even if you spread that initiative over 4 skill slots that skill can be used every 20 seconds.

Jon

It’s an initial gap closer with 600 range (Warrior, Elementalist and Ranger have 1200 and 1100 range gap closers) so generally you have to combine it with steal or a utility to actually close the gap. 1 condition removed every 5 seconds on a universal cool-down, which isn’t crazy considering thief’s lack of condition cleanse options.

With the nerf you’ll obviously be losing the escape when not stunned function, you’ll also be losing the ability to use it as a dodge, yes 1/3rd of a second isn’t long (I thought you originally listed 1/4?) but keep in mind dodge is instant. Thief is currently the squishiest class as we have no stability (outside of cancelling an elite), lowest tiered HP pool, very few condition removals, no protection, no aegis and no regeneration outside of stealth spec builds and a 30s ICD trait (Pain Response). IR nerf coupled with the vigor nerf is just asking for thieves to be free kills for the majority of classes honestly.

If you add any cast time add like a .01s cast time so it’s still instant, but can’t be used while stunned and give us more access to stun breaks or stability, otherwise I truly believe that his change will ruin sword MH as many have stated.

1 nanosecond is too long. This skill needs to work while stunned and during stomps unless we’re getting protection and stability in this same patch.

Hype.8032:

KaiserCX.7103:

JonPeters.5630:

It is currently for 3 initiative:

• gap closer
• 1s immob

for 2 more initiative:

• escape when not stunned
• remove 1 condition

With the new base regen that means you can gap close and immobilize and remove a condition every 5 seconds. Even if you spread that initiative over 4 skill slots that skill can be used every 20 seconds.

Jon

It’s an initial gap closer with 600 range (Warrior, Elementalist and Ranger have 1200 and 1100 range gap closers) so generally you have to combine it with steal or a utility to actually close the gap. 1 condition removed every 5 seconds on a universal cool-down, which isn’t crazy considering thief’s lack of condition cleanse options.

With the nerf you’ll obviously be losing the escape when not stunned function, you’ll also be losing the ability to use it as a dodge, yes 1/3rd of a second isn’t long (I thought you originally listed 1/4?) but keep in mind dodge is instant. Thief is currently the squishiest class as we have no stability (outside of cancelling an elite), lowest tiered HP pool, very few condition removals, no protection, no aegis and no regeneration outside of stealth spec builds and a 30s ICD trait (Pain Response). IR nerf coupled with the vigor nerf is just asking for thieves to be free kills for the majority of classes honestly.

If you add any cast time add like a .01s cast time so it’s still instant, but can’t be used while stunned and give us more access to stun breaks or stability, otherwise I truly believe that his change will ruin sword MH as many have stated.

1 nanosecond is too long. This skill needs to work while stunned and during stomps unless we’re getting protection and stability in this same patch.

Yeah I stated unless they add stability or more access to stun breaks, otherwise I agree it should be left alone. In all honesty though, I really rather them leave it than add stability. Throwing in stability and possibly protection will just make thief feel like a warrior on some level, one of the main points of thief is to move fast and hit hard, standing there through CC and hard hits wouldn’t feel right.

Yeah, I’m against adding those to the class as well. We already have the tools, anet just needs to stop taking them away.

Ichishi.9613:

Ensign.2189:

JonPeters.5630:

Let’s break down this thief change a bit more so we can dispel any notions that this is going to ruin thieves.

For sPvP, you’re probably ruining thieves with the Shadow Return nerf. Mainhand dagger doesn’t matter in the tank meta, and sword is losing all the tools it needed to not die in a fight. That isn’t saying that this isn’t going to be for the best in the long run, but the class is probably going to be trash tier for several months until you figure out how to make it work.

The initiative changes are pretty blah. Opportunist is a group PvE powerhouse on a generally weak PvE class, but it’s a pretty forgettable trait in PvP; the change you’re making is going to sledgehammer it in PvE and not have much of an effect on PvP. Honestly I’m more annoyed that it continues the trend of poor proc design than any power level concerns (precision is a sub-par stat in your game because you balanced it around procs, then sledgehammered all the procs) and it’s a step backward in fixing that problem in the long run. Cutting the proc chance in half would be a whole lot healthier than this proposal, for what it’s worth.

Most of the other traits hits you decided on feel bad simply because there isn’t a whole lot you can do about them; you’ll still end up taking the traits and feel bad about it. It’s not like I’m going to stop putting 30 points into Critical Strikes because you nerfed Opportunist; it wasn’t a big part of a PvP spec anyway, and the alternative is not being able to kill things. Ripping a bunch of power off of Quick Recovery doesn’t encourage me to experiment with different traits in an Acrobatics build, because nothing else in the line does anything – you’ll just suck it up and run bad Quick Recovery. Kleptomaniac was a nice bonus for investing 30 points into Trickery, now it’s basically garbage unless you put 30 points into Trickery.

…and so forth. Again, it’s not a disagreement with the design direction. I agree with the design intent 100%. It’s more that these changes look, well, like a first pass alpha draft, and I’d hope to see significant refinement of these concepts before they’re pushed to live.

What he said. Was there ever a round table where all the solutions were listed and considered in orderly and constructive manner? If you don’t have enough time I am pretty sure you would at least have some to read a bit of the work that community can do FOR you and BETTER than you. Simply because there is more of us

I disagree. This community shouted anyone down when the unfairness of permastealth was raised. It cannot think to the good of the game, rather only advocate for its narrow self interests. If I were Anet , I would use this forum’s input only as fact checking. If were up to many in this community the glaring op issues would never be touched.

A ton of people including myself proposed changes to nerf perma-stealth. Anet’s change is the same as what I suggest several months back. You exaggerate even though your point has some merit

Sanduskel.1850:

I disagree. This community shouted anyone down when the unfairness of permastealth was raised. It cannot think to the good of the game, rather only advocate for its narrow self interests. If I were Anet , I would use this forum’s input only as fact checking. If were up to many in this community the glaring op issues would never be touched.

Can you provide links to these discussions you speak of, where the majority of people contributing were supporting permastealth? At most, I see people tell those complaining about permastealth to “l2p,” but it’s pretty unanimous that it’s a cheap tactic whether you can counter it or not.

Also, which “glaring op issues” are being ignored by the community?