Guild Wars 2

While a good enough idea in theory, this trait seems to get you killed more often than not when playing against other players. The fact that it can proc in the middle of an attack, or when the revealed debuff is up makes it borderline useless unless your strategy involves just standing around taking hits. Combined with it being a minor trait, so out of your control, it makes it even more detrimental.

So how can we go about fixing it? I have a couple ideas.

1) Make the trait unlock a secondary profession skill (f2). Instead of the skill proctoring automatically, when your health is dropped below that 25% (while traited of course), the skill would become available. This way, you could activate it when you want to, as long as the conditions are met (it being off CD and health being low enough).

2) Give it a separate stealth stack. Certain skills such as Mass Invisibility from a Mesmer give a different stealth buff than what we utilize, and if Last Refuge were to be made into a separate stealth buff from normal stealth, it would allow us to enter stealth regardless of the debuff.

I think that combining the two would be the best choice to fix the trait. That way it would actually give us control over our trait, plus it would allow for the trait to be a useful method of escape/stealth, which is what it is meant to be.

On the idea of it adding a profession skill, other traitlines could also utilize a similar concept, where depending on your spec you could have different profession skills. I think that sort of revision on the class would be a breath of fresh air and could really help make us more useful on separate fronts than the few cookie-cutter builds we have.

I think the best way to fix it would be to remove it. But for the sake of argument, I can think of a few good ways to fix it without dedicating a whole function key slot to it. I think the root of the problem with this skill is that it’s stealth – involuntarily. Which means you’ll never expect it. Which means that if you don’t expect it, you can’t expect to take advantage of it.

I think that the best way to fix Last Refuge isn’t to make the cooldown shorter, make the stealth different or triggerable, or changing the type of stealth, or any combination of the above. The reason I disagree with your ideas (especially 1) is because there’s no reason to have the button when the trait isn’t baseline. For anyone that doesn’t use it, it’s wasted UI. As for number 2, we go back to my first paragraph. Without expecting it, the stealth will likely be wasted, meaning you’ll be in the same position we currently are in with this trait. It triggers, we reveal, oops.

So I’d propose to rework the trait entirely, even gutting it out in favor of a new trait. Maybe take out slowed pulse or shadow protector, regen with 2 stacks of bleeding or regen on stealth respectively, and replace Last Refuge with a weak version of one of these two. Because who uses those anyway? Don’t take this out of proportion, though, by replacing Last Refuge with a trait like Shadow Infusion (gain 2 ini on stealth). This would make SA one of those lines like Mesmer Illusions where you HAVE to at least put 5 points into SA, at all times, for (nearly) all builds.

Perhaps another idea: If Anet is so keen to keep the stealth, cancel the current action and autoattack upon trigger of this trait. Sounds counter intuitive, and it is. In fact, it’s a horrible idea. But that’s the only way we’d be able to take advantage of the stealth, honestly.

don’t take the SA tree
->permanent fix

It would he nice if it were something like “going into stealth returns endurance” which would help with those pesky channeled attacks that can sometimes follow us during what seems like the entire duration of stealth. Or maybe if that doesn’t fit well enough,we drop a smoke field instead. That way we won’t stealth and then reveal ourselves by accident, but it would soak 1-2 hits and allow dagger mainhand to stealth off of it. To prevent stacking from an auto proc, maybe this field could last only 2 seconds.

I would just make this kitten simple. Give toughness when you enter stealth.

Could just make the stealth created by last refuge doesn’t interfere with revealed. That would make it “OP” but think again, it’s on a 60s cooldown, it won’t be that OP.

The trait is amazing. The only oxymoron is that it currently benefits low stealth builds more than high stealth builds even though it’s in shadow arts. Either way it’s too valuable (for certain playstyles) to just delete imo.

Last Refuge is fine as is. It actually is quite the life saver. Thieves just need to learn to watch their health and understand how the skill works. Once they do, they will see it more as a benefit.

Exactly This^^^

It’s saved me on countless occasions.
I’ve just learned to:

• Not attempt a death blossom chain when my health reaches over 25%
• Keep dagger 1 off of autoattack
• Watch my health closer

I think you get the idea..

Swap it with any of the other SA adept major traits that won’t randomly place the user in unfavorable situations, while the people insisting it’s helpful for them can choose to take it as their major adept trait…

Instead of giving me Blinding Powder at 25% health Give me
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Black_Powder

eh? eh?

The other day I played WvW for like 4-5 hours, killed 100~ people and died 4 times. All 4 of my deaths were the direct result of last refugee proccing as I hit CnD giving me revealed at the worst possible time. I’m all for fixing or removing this trait, it is the bane of my existence when it comes to this game.

OIIIIIO.7825:

Instead of giving me Blinding Powder at 25% health Give me
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Black_Powder

eh? eh?

And ya, this is the best solution I have heard, mainly because its good and easy to implement.

SF Represent!

They could just change it to activate when stunned instead so you can’t attack when it activates.