Guild Wars 2

Simply, our initiative is meant to be our substitute for cooldowns. So why do we have weapon swap cooldowns like every other class that needs them to not abuse weapon cooldowns?
I think that making thief weapon swap much lower, such as say 1 second CD, at the cost of maybe 2 initiative, would make the class play a little more unique, without overbalancing us since we can’t spam our (supposedly) powerful non-auto abilities, but we can be more flexible.

As much as I would LOVE being able to go in and out and in and… well that’s it initiative just burnt out, while stacking blind and torment with 3 d/p and 3 p/d, people would consider that too OP.

But I do support the idea though. (initiative does burn out faster than people think)

I second this idea!

It should only take a check added to on-swap sigils and traits to be workable. Been wanting this since I started.

And people already think the Thief is overpowered. In fact, there are some that think the Thief is overpowered because two of them working together can burst you down in a few seconds. So I have learned to ignore them. All I know is that I’d rather be overpowered than underpowered, and when one profession can’t go 1v1 against any profession other than itself, it is underpowered.

I have to admit even in the current meta I thought thieves were overpowered in their burst ability, then I tried one out and started understanding what they were doing to me. There’s still a couple of thieves out there I struggle with that I see regularly, but for the most part I can at least force disengages even 1v1 just by knowing the likely skill usage, since we have such a small variety.
The paired thief burst is still a problem but honestly any paired class that understands how to work together is a huge issue-even the slow burn of a condi necro can splatter you when they overload clears with two of them. Hell, I remember splattering a medi guard in about 2 seconds with the combination of my DPS engi and a burst mesmer recently. He knew we were coming too which is even scarier. Thieves are only scary when you don’t see them coming.
Also, on swap sigils at least already have ICD (9 seconds), probably because of the Warrior traitlines. I’m less sure about traits but there aren’t exactly many.
Sure, going dp pd would give you a nice burst and swap and burst ability, but you’ve sacrificed the single best thing a current thief has-shortbow, and your burst burns up over half your initiative bar.

I wonder, would the DD line’s 8s of swiftness on dodge plus 25% movespeed (from signet or rune) make up for lack of shortbow, mobility wise?

Also wondering how mobile Staff #5 is, i.e. if you can use it to get around faster like certain greatsword skills on other professions.

Well, it would be nice to actually have more than one choice of weapon set for a competitive sPvP thief. I imagine WvW is similar.

I like this idea. just make sure swap traits have an ICD similar to sigils and I can’t see any reason why we need swap cooldowns at all.

Then again, swap reduction is sort of a core warrior mechanic, so they might want to keep it unique to warriors.

PopeUrban.2578:

I like this idea. just make sure swap traits have an ICD similar to sigils and I can’t see any reason why we need swap cooldowns at all.

Then again, swap reduction is sort of a core warrior mechanic, so they might want to keep it unique to warriors.

Well, I was thinking of more or less removing swap (so engi kit swap time) and tying it into initiative, rather than just “reducing”

That would take rebalancing of all weapon skills across the board with probably some nerfs.

Why? We wouldn’t be able to do any more spam than we already can, in fact if it cost initiative to swap instead of having a cooldown it’d be even less.