Guild Wars 2

For those that didn’t see it in the patch notes comment and answer thread, the developers have recently confirmed the following:

1) They are happy with the cooldown and have no intent to change it

2) The cooldown was added in order to add an opportunity cost to stealth attacks because they don’t use initiative.

Wonderful. Thanks for the info tho, its nice they finally gave an answer for it.

All I needed is to hear dev answer. thanks.

It would have been a FAR better design to cost init for Backstab then to add more cool downs to the class.

Straegen.2938:

It would have been a FAR better design to cost init for Backstab then to add more cool downs to the class.

Indeed, it seems like it goes directly against the mechanic Thief is designed for, to add cooldowns to their weapon abilities. Initiative costs make more sense.

TwiceDead.1963:

Straegen.2938:

It would have been a FAR better design to cost init for Backstab then to add more cool downs to the class.

Indeed, it seems like it goes directly against the mechanic Thief is designed for, to add cooldowns to their weapon abilities. Initiative costs make more sense.

It’s also a more balanced approach since it allows the thief to deal with passive blocks and the likes, unlike currently, but can still lock a spamming thief out of his abilities.

But alas, not gonna happen methinks. I’d like to play thief again, but playing a backstab build with the ICD is just frustrating most encounters.

Straegen.2938:

It would have been a FAR better design to cost init for Backstab then to add more cool downs to the class.

Well I can not agree with the premise that the attacks from Stealth are “free of cost” in any case.

In order to achieve stealth one generally has to use a Utility or use initiative so as to stealth. That means everytime I want to backstab , or sneak attack, or surprise shot or do a hook strike, I have to use INI in some fashion to stealth.

babazhook.6805:

Straegen.2938:

It would have been a FAR better design to cost init for Backstab then to add more cool downs to the class.

Well I can not agree with the premise that the attacks from Stealth are “free of cost” in any case.

In order to achieve stealth one generally has to use a Utility or use initiative so as to stealth. That means everytime I want to backstab , or sneak attack, or surprise shot or do a hook strike, I have to use INI in some fashion to stealth.

You’re right, though I think it’s more about damage safety; a stealthed thief spamming backstab and so on was basically getting free attempts to land big damage if the opponent popped Aegis.

Actually, I’m pretty sure the sole reason for the ICD was because a good thief could negate Aegis. Explains the BV change to one stack that happened in the same patch, too.