Improving Thief Idea: No CD on Weapon Swap

Improving Thief Idea: No CD on Weapon Swap

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Posted by: Lyger.5429

Lyger.5429

This has probably been mentioned before but I have an idea on how it could be implemented. As a thief you have initiative to use in place of skill cooldowns, this would continue to remain the same. Instead there are would no cooldown (or 1 second cooldown) on your weapon swap. This would encourage using more than one weapon in a fight as the situation demands, while still using the same initiative pool. It could potentially increase build diversity as well.

To prevent exploitation the “on swap” skills would require an ICD. Even if this cannot be implemented on current thief it would be neat on an elite spec.

Discuss your thoughts/criticisms/ideas below.

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Posted by: Jugglemonkey.8741

Jugglemonkey.8741

To be honest, I’d rather see stuff like ini gain on swap become baseline. That way, you could actually do something besides auto when swapping to bow, and bow would be less essential as a secondary set without nerfing it in any way. Everybody wins.

Critical Kit, Thief.
Don’t follow me, unless you enjoy being chased by angry men with sticks.
Power Build Condi Build

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Posted by: Zaerah.1630

Zaerah.1630

I’m usually just criticizing kittenty ideas at this forum, but i think this one is actually reasonable and could help a lot to make another melee weapon set more attractive, maybe throw it to acro line as base trait or something.

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Posted by: Chapell.1346

Chapell.1346

Quick Pockets + Fast Hands combine on thief? Goodluck

[Urge]
Between a master and apprentice, i would love to see the differences.

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Posted by: Lyger.5429

Lyger.5429

Quick Pockets + Fast Hands combine on thief? Goodluck

Haha one can dream

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Posted by: Azure The Heartless.3261

Azure The Heartless.3261

internal CD on traits that affect thief on swap and this would be… pretty interesting to playtest.

Resident Disgruntled, Coffee-drinking Charr.
Zarin Mistcloak(THF) Valkyrie Mistblade(WAR) Kossori Mistwalker(REV) Durendal Mistward(GRD)
I used to think (build op, pls nerf) like you, but then I took a nerf to the knee.

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Posted by: godz raiden.2631

godz raiden.2631

I’m not a big fan of this idea for a few reasons.

1) Having a cooldown on weapon swaps is important for the “ebb and flow” of combat. What I mean by this is that there are certain opportunities that you, or your opponents, can take advantage of when a weapon swap occurs. Without a cooldown on weapon swaps, I think thief would be given an unfair advantage to some degree, or at least an unnecessary one. Seeing your opponent swap weapons, for most classes, is an important tell that good players will take advantage of. “Alright, that draghonhunter just swapped to his longbow, I need to watch for a good time to use any reflects I have and also try to close the gap to him to make his weaponset less effective.” Weapon swapping having a cooldown gives windows of opportunity.

2)This game gets pretty spammy with skills at times. For example, look at engineers and their kits. Any engineer who runs a multiple kit build does, to some degree, spam their skills off cooldown. They might do it with a purpose for each skill, but the point remains that not having cooldown on the swaps itself allows them effectively just go from one kit to the next pressing 2 through 5 (in varying orders) and be semi-effective. I realize since thief uses initiative this wouldn’t necessarily be a problem, but I think you would have to accompany such a change with a baseline initiative return on weapon swap for it be meaningful, and that would probably lend itself to spamming abilities more than thinking about when to skillfully use them.

3) This would be a unnecessary power creep for the thief class that would enrage players of other classes, especially warriors. Warriors already have to invest in a particular traitline to get a 5 second weapon swap, and they have cooldowns on their weapon skills as well. It would just seem like a slap in the face to warriors to get a better version of their fast hands baseline, when warriors have been asking to make fast hands baseline for a while now. I just don’t think our class needs to have a better version of a mechanic that the players of another class consider to be core to almost all of their builds.

Godz Raiden (Thief)
Maguuma

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Posted by: Azure The Heartless.3261

Azure The Heartless.3261

I’m not a big fan of this idea for a few reasons.

1) Having a cooldown on weapon swaps is important for the “ebb and flow” of combat. What I mean by this is that there are certain opportunities that you, or your opponents, can take advantage of when a weapon swap occurs. Without a cooldown on weapon swaps, I think thief would be given an unfair advantage to some degree, or at least an unnecessary one. Seeing your opponent swap weapons, for most classes, is an important tell that good players will take advantage of. “Alright, that draghonhunter just swapped to his longbow, I need to watch for a good time to use any reflects I have and also try to close the gap to him to make his weaponset less effective.” Weapon swapping having a cooldown gives windows of opportunity.

2)This game gets pretty spammy with skills at times. For example, look at engineers and their kits. Any engineer who runs a multiple kit build does, to some degree, spam their skills off cooldown. They might do it with a purpose for each skill, but the point remains that not having cooldown on the swaps itself allows them effectively just go from one kit to the next pressing 2 through 5 (in varying orders) and be semi-effective. I realize since thief uses initiative this wouldn’t necessarily be a problem, but I think you would have to accompany such a change with a baseline initiative return on weapon swap for it be meaningful, and that would probably lend itself to spamming abilities more than thinking about when to skillfully use them.

3) This would be a unnecessary power creep for the thief class that would enrage players of other classes, especially warriors. Warriors already have to invest in a particular traitline to get a 5 second weapon swap, and they have cooldowns on their weapon skills as well. It would just seem like a slap in the face to warriors to get a better version of their fast hands baseline, when warriors have been asking to make fast hands baseline for a while now. I just don’t think our class needs to have a better version of a mechanic that the players of another class consider to be core to almost all of their builds.

Re: #3, I don’t think that “slap in the face to X class because that is their mechanic” is a valid reason for scrapping an interesting concept for another.

Re: #2, I disagree for the same reason you shared. Thieves have an initiative pool, which makes all of their skill usage restricted even without the weapon swap CD. I see that Swap/SB5 away is probably going to be an issue with this proposal, but I wouldn’t say the same about spam. The drain each skill has on ini would probably add another layer of complexity to thief instead coupled with this change. Thieves may be more cautious to not attack all out because they know they may have an option to bail if they have misread the opponent.

Re: #1, I agree with this.

Resident Disgruntled, Coffee-drinking Charr.
Zarin Mistcloak(THF) Valkyrie Mistblade(WAR) Kossori Mistwalker(REV) Durendal Mistward(GRD)
I used to think (build op, pls nerf) like you, but then I took a nerf to the knee.

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Posted by: Lyger.5429

Lyger.5429

I’m not a big fan of this idea for a few reasons.

1) Having a cooldown on weapon swaps is important for the “ebb and flow” of combat. What I mean by this is that there are certain opportunities that you, or your opponents, can take advantage of when a weapon swap occurs. Without a cooldown on weapon swaps, I think thief would be given an unfair advantage to some degree, or at least an unnecessary one. Seeing your opponent swap weapons, for most classes, is an important tell that good players will take advantage of. “Alright, that draghonhunter just swapped to his longbow, I need to watch for a good time to use any reflects I have and also try to close the gap to him to make his weaponset less effective.” Weapon swapping having a cooldown gives windows of opportunity.

I will address this concern since I agree with what Azure said for the other 2. I definitely agree with combat having flow (this was probably more present pre-HoT than now), however thief is still limited to camping their main weapon for almost indefinitely and only switching to their secondary as the situation demands, with initiative cost keeping them in place. The "tell’ that you are looking for will still be there. For example if a thief is using staff & p/p (an unusual combination ) and engages with staff you know that they will be in melee range for the most part once they spam vault initiative will be low. So they have 3 choices if they have failed to down their opponent. 1. Die or 2. switch to p/p to either spam 1 unload (if they have initiative on swap) or disengage with black powder and bound. This is just an example to show that while the possibilities may increase in-combat, the thief can still be “read” pretty often.

To be honest, I’d rather see stuff like ini gain on swap become baseline. That way, you could actually do something besides auto when swapping to bow, and bow would be less essential as a secondary set without nerfing it in any way. Everybody wins.

Yea the bare minimum would be initiative on swap baseline.

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Posted by: Double Trouble.3162

Double Trouble.3162

Weapon swap with no cd will not only give advantage to thief, it will make it really op.

Give quick pockets to every thief as standard.

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Posted by: Azure The Heartless.3261

Azure The Heartless.3261

Weapon swap with no cd will not only give advantage to thief, it will make it really op.

Why?

I request elaboration on how thief would become “really op” with this.

Resident Disgruntled, Coffee-drinking Charr.
Zarin Mistcloak(THF) Valkyrie Mistblade(WAR) Kossori Mistwalker(REV) Durendal Mistward(GRD)
I used to think (build op, pls nerf) like you, but then I took a nerf to the knee.

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Posted by: godz raiden.2631

godz raiden.2631

Re: #3, I don’t think that “slap in the face to X class because that is their mechanic” is a valid reason for scrapping an interesting concept for another.

Re: #2, I disagree for the same reason you shared. Thieves have an initiative pool, which makes all of their skill usage restricted even without the weapon swap CD. I see that Swap/SB5 away is probably going to be an issue with this proposal, but I wouldn’t say the same about spam. The drain each skill has on ini would probably add another layer of complexity to thief instead coupled with this change. Thieves may be more cautious to not attack all out because they know they may have an option to bail if they have misread the opponent.

Re: #1, I agree with this.

Honestly, I agree to you to some extent about both my 2nd and 3rd reasons. I think for both of those reasons I listed, I’m thinking more from a place of caution knowing that Anet loves to nerf thief, and a change like this would definitely give some extra power to thief which would probably see us nerfed pretty harshly. Sure, just because warriors would complain doesn’t mean we shouldn’t get it, but if enough of them complain loud enough, and Anet listens (like they tend to do when people complain about thief), I would expect a nerf along the lines of initiative costs increasing or our damage coefficients being lowered.

Godz Raiden (Thief)
Maguuma

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Posted by: Double Trouble.3162

Double Trouble.3162

Weapon swap with no cd will not only give advantage to thief, it will make it really op.

Why?

I request elaboration on how thief would become “really op” with this.

Quick pockets will allow u to never go out of initiative. Just imagine never ending pistol whip. Or vault …

Sure i would love that, but it would be way to op.

Ofc they could add a 9 sec cd on that trait, like the sigils have. That would fix it.

I’m also against it in any way. For a thief, weapon swap is a strategic thing. While other classes need to swap, to keep up in dmg, we dont. Weapon swapping often distinguishes between good an bad thiefs. Maybe lower the cd for 2-3 sec, but not 0 cd.

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Posted by: Vornollo.5182

Vornollo.5182

I’d much rather have Quick Pockets in Baseline.
Like others have said, when you get to a certain level of gameplay, you start looking for things such as a weapon swap to base your tactic(s)/plan of attack/defense of. If you really want a lower cooldown, run Rune of the Warrior, lowers your weapon swap CD by 20%.

[PUSH] Constant Pressure

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Posted by: Shezu Tsukai.8291

Shezu Tsukai.8291

Weapon swap sigils break this idea.

You would be able to keep your foe chilled, bleeding, blinded and poisoned with just auto attacks and weapon swaps.

Verum et Vitae

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Posted by: MarauderShields.6830

MarauderShields.6830

Nope. No more power creep. Shave other classes massively until they are in line with teef and war.

Former running-really-fast-man. Now proud member of Revenant clan.

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Posted by: Double Trouble.3162

Double Trouble.3162

Weapon swap sigils break this idea.

You would be able to keep your foe chilled, bleeding, blinded and poisoned with just auto attacks and weapon swaps.

They dont, they all have 9 sec cd.

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Posted by: Azure The Heartless.3261

Azure The Heartless.3261

Weapon swap with no cd will not only give advantage to thief, it will make it really op.

Why?

I request elaboration on how thief would become “really op” with this.

Quick pockets will allow u to never go out of initiative. Just imagine never ending pistol whip. Or vault …

Sure i would love that, but it would be way to op.

Ofc they could add a 9 sec cd on that trait, like the sigils have. That would fix it.

I’m also against it in any way. For a thief, weapon swap is a strategic thing. While other classes need to swap, to keep up in dmg, we dont. Weapon swapping often distinguishes between good an bad thiefs. Maybe lower the cd for 2-3 sec, but not 0 cd.

RE: 9 sec CD on trait

yes. Check my response earlier in the thread; obviously they’d have to add ICD for traits that give ini or bonuses on swap, but after that it miggght be a decent idea to run with, notwithstanding glaring problems I havent noticed.

Resident Disgruntled, Coffee-drinking Charr.
Zarin Mistcloak(THF) Valkyrie Mistblade(WAR) Kossori Mistwalker(REV) Durendal Mistward(GRD)
I used to think (build op, pls nerf) like you, but then I took a nerf to the knee.