Guild Wars 2

I would like to start off this by saying that I haven’t looked around the forums to see if there’s a thread similar to this, because I can’t be bothered scrolling through enless walls of text.

I want to make suggestion for improving the Thief trait “Improvisation”, which allows you to use stolen items twice, and randomly recharges all skills from one skill category. I love this trait to death. It has saved my hide more than once as more than one vital skill has suddenly has it’s minute recharge reduced, and some stolen items are very useful twice. That’s my opinion.

That being said however, I think as more elite specializations come out, adding more utility skill categories to choose from, that Improvisation will become more and more redundant. Physical skills have already impacted the trait somewhat. The current Improvisation also slightly forces a variety of skill categories to be being used, which is sometimes a bad thing when you want to, say use 3 or more skills of one category

My suggestion is changing recharging one random category of skills, to randomly recharging one equipped utility skill, either one that is recharging or randomly picking one that isn’t recharging. (I suggest these options because the former is more useful, but the latter simulates recharging a skill category you don’t have.) I think that this would make Improvisation far more useful, and remove the redundancy as more utility skill categories come out.

I agree with the recharging of 1 utility skill vs skill category however you also mention it chosing based on recharging and non-recharging skills. That doesn’t put this skill anywhere useful still, it actually would be considered a nerf for those who may of had 2 of the same skills from a category and now only 1 of those randomly got selected.

A simple solution, make improvisation reduce recharges of healing, utility and elite skills by a flat amount (say 45 seconds) and split that amongst skills being recharged. So, for example

You have slotted [Hide In shadows], [Blinding powder], [Shadowstep] [Inf Signet] and [Basilisk Venom].

-You have [Blinding Powder] and [Basilisk Venom] currently recharging with 20 seconds and 30 seconds respectively.

-You use steal and successfully land it. 2 skills splitting 45 seconds so despite [Withdraw] only having 20 seconds left, it gets 22.5 seconds and is fully recharged. [Basilisk Venom] gets 22.5 and now has 7.5 seconds left on recharge.

Basically improvisation gets to work 100% of the time but still works slightly off of skill management since any overage of recharge reduction simply gets negated. Ofcourse 45 seconds is only a random value but I picked it based on a fairly high amount of skills being on cooldown to where 45 gets cut down to 22.5/15/11.25/9 seconds but if need be, it can toned down further.

Just to make this clear: no matter what combination of skills you have, this is a buff, not a nerf (unless you consider a recharged healing skill more useful than a recharged utility skill)
I made like 3 or 4 different tables and interpreted the data in every way I could think of, in order to prove this was actually a nerf.
But no matter how you look at it, this would be a buff and so I eventually rested my case.

With the trait working on recharging and non-recharging skills and only utility skills, you’d have to throw a utility skill out there to make use of this. Not to say that’s 100% a bad thing, however its still letting a trait dictate some of your moves.

In most fights I have my utilities off cooldown and only slot defensive ones to either get me up or get me out, I’d rather not have to think about throwing 1 on cooldown to then steal to have this trait help me. Sure it would be nice in those moments where I do happen to have 1 on cooldown and now I get a free-bee but its just like saying last refuge is a good trait because it sometimes works out.

On-action traits should work 100% of the time. Not saying this improvisation is a 100% nerf but it has potential to be an obligation. I’d rather slot a trait that always helps me in some way, but that’s just me.It still beats the current improvisation by a long shot where it is either awesome or extremely disappointing.

@Astrat: Fair enough. I’m suggesting this because Improvisation would slowly nerf itself over time as more utility skills are added.

@NinjaEd: I can see how that would make sense. I’m not discrediting the idea of recharging your utility skills by a flat amount, and maybe instead of 45 seconds split among recharging utility skills, it could recharge all utility skills by, say, 10 seconds or a percent based off of their cooldown.
In regards to your second post, I’m a Thief that usually uses their utility skills as soon as I need them, causing them to be on cooldown constantly. I also have a mish-mash of utility skills, so not all of them are defensive, seeing most of them on cooldown mostly. This is why I use Improvisation, and I think the point of the skill is to recharge those skills. For instance, I love the skill “Roll for Initiative”, because it allows me to do exactly that, as well as providing mobility and a stun break.

On another note, you have to consider the other two options available in that trait line. You have “Potent Poison”, and “Executioner”. Especially when you look at Executioner, Improvisation seems lacking in my opinion.

I like and dislike this idea at the same time. It makes a lot of sense, it really does, but I like being able to recharge multiple utilities too, should we choose take multiple of the same type. If Anet is unable to restrict it to currently available utility types (5 in Thief, 6 in Daredevil/other Elite specs) then this does seem like the natural route to take.

If it were going to reduce the cooldowns, I’d think 20% off all utilities would be very strong. Perhaps even stronger than resetting 1 of the 5, but it would make more sense than a flat 10 seconds or such.

Another thing I’d be curious to see (but may have balance implications) is for Improvisation to reset traits who’s cooldown is based on utilities (such as flanking strikes). (Edit: Does it apply to other traits? I see the wiki has a specific note that Improvisation doesn’t reset FLanking strikes, and this was the only one I tested to see if it worked on traits.)