Guild Wars 2

I said it in he other thread but this trait has to get hit hard because it is breaking the profession. We need to push the effectiveness of this trait into base thief functionality. If any other profession had a trait that reduced weapon cooldown by 30% for all weapons as a 15 point minor we would have to balance around that. A single trait shouldn’t be holding thief balance hostage so we will steal from this trait, no pun intended, and impart the savings on to every build via base initiative regeneration.
Jon

Nerfing Opportunist bc it provides too much of a “cast reduction”is absolutely 100% ridiculous.
With the proposed changes to initiative regen thieves are going to fall even further behind.
I’m going to ignore dagger builds for this, they rely on initiative more so for utility rather then dps so i’ll concentrate on S/X and P/X
All of their commonly used dps skills require 5 initiave except for shadow strike which is 4. Without traits/skills your suggesting that we have 1initiative a second regen which would mean that over a 100 second period we can only use our skills 20 or 25 times.

Compared to mesmer who can use between 21-29 weapon atks depending on which weapon set they are using(btw this does not include weapon swapping, which they can do aswell), and isnt inclusive of the fact that they can summon phantasms that dish out atks/utilities aswell.
You’re also offering them a 20% cooldown on their most valuable skills for 15points, and get another 20% on top of that for another 20 points, 10 in the case of swords.

Compared to thiefs, opportunist under ideal conditions is only a 20% boost in cooldown; base rate 1 with perfect trigger of 1 every 5sec. And your nerfing our other trait to only provide a 10% bonus which is a 20 point skill btw.

Of course this doesnt include skill quality and over all effectiveness, but unlike other classes our cooldowns follow through on weapon swap, where as other classes get more skill usages over an extended period of time and get an additional set of cooldowns via weapon swap.

Thiefs also only get 1 physical dmg skill through utilities and its an elite.

Mesmers the only other class I’m familiar with, but if other people want to do this comparison with other classes.

Probably the fastest is warriors… I can’t remember the exact spec I’ve been running but with x/x/x/x/30 you get 7s burst skills and weapon swap every 5s. Using s/s and lb (well see with changes to lb burst) the skills are 2-3 sword auto, impale, flurry, swap lb, fan of fire, pin down, combustive shot… blah blah about 16s rotation through both weapons ends up with 30-38 attacks per 100sec. Just pop signet of fury for instant adrenaline at beginning of fight and there you have it, high sustained power/cond build. The number of attacks will vary with adrenaline gain, more mobs the better, but that is a pretty accurate number of attacks (in a fight not dummies).

Edit: think the build is 0/20/20/0/30 anyway it is outrageously faster, more bleeds, and torment then p/d thief and fire instead of poison, drags the fight out longer but effective i guess.

I play all 8 classes, and while I’ve only played Thief to 80 (I’m almost there with Mesmer, and Necro and Ranger not far behind – just started Warrior and Engi) – I can say that this is probably the worst class in the game, while Ranger is a close second.

The Thief needs to be redesigned from the ground up – it’s an absolute mess.

Which is unfortunate, because conceptually at least, it’s my favorite.

Bad changes all around, the upcoming nerfs will kill/hurt a lot of builds to quite an extend. Just take back your 33% passive initiative regeneration, seriously. It wouldn’t be enough to justify all the nerfs at all.

Also, Assassin’s reward and Hard to Catch is complete garbage, honestly speaking. It needs more of a overhaul then a buff as there are better skills to take even if you “buff” them.

Although warrior is Jon’s favorite child, at least pretend to show some for the thief class? Arigatou.

I dont think Assassin’s Reward is all that bad, I used it in a venom share build with magi set and it was probably comparable to Healing Signet.
That being said, unless your playing a pure defensive build, it hardly warrants any points yet alone its master status.
I think with a big enough buff, it would be quite rewarding for an offensive playstyle and probably negate some of our needs for dodge/mobility although i’d also feel that would play against thieve’s design as a whole.