Initiative is bad
uhm…i honestly feel you are not looking at the skills closely AT ALL.
every build has mostly 1 damage skill. the rest are situational utility.
Dagger/pistol has heartseeker for damage, shadow shot for gap closing, headshot for interrupts, and black powder for entering stealth, blind aoe pulse, etc. there is no “omg this skill suxxors” and in fact id say your suggestions would make thieves a less well rounded class.
sword/pistol has pistol whip and there gap closer that acts like a mini shadowstep.
dagger/dagger is about the only one you could argue has 2 damage skills. and they support different builds, heartseeker and deathblossom. with dancing dagger as a slow that can hit multiple targets, and CnD to enter stealth, nearly all its abilities do good damage as well. so it may be the best one for you since you feel all our abilities should be omg damage.
sword/dagger a evasion ability that strips boons
pistol/dagger a gap opening ability
shortbow has a self actualizing combo with cluster and poison aoes. a gap opener/snare and a mobility tool.
honestly, this isnt a initiative problem, this is a design BECAUSE of initiative and is a boon to the class.
Initiative is very obviously the problem with this class.
The whole point behind pistol offhand is to exchange damage for utility. However, since initiative regen is so out of what, you lose next to no damage and gain an enormous amount of utility in exchange.
Now that said, you can’t simply nerf initiative regen without enormous buffs in other areas. When you look at the Thief class in comparison to other classes, it’s not blowing them out of the water. Even at roaming, the thief is hardly in its own league. Mesmers, Guardians, Rangers, Elementalists, and Thieves are all in the same general area when it comes to overall balance (offensively anyway) for roaming.
Taking without giving in equal or great proportion will do nothing but destroy the entire class. So while initiative is very obviously the problem, fixing it will be a near impossible task and a waste of time so long as the thief is no better or worse than half the other classes out there.
While initiative makes the playing experience more dynamic, it’s the reason why we can’t have a lot of things (long CC, burning on weapon skills and any other thing that when spammed might get too powerful) and why we’re contantly being nerfed (If for example CnD was on a cooldown system we would have far more useful skills across the board to compensate not being able to use so much stealth).
To get spammability (which nerfs everything we have in the process) we sacrifice skill usage rate (the Thief has the lowest skill usage rate in the game in exchange of being able to use the same skill 3 times) and we can’t have any “sexy” weapon skill because once spammed it could be abused.
Initiative is what we love about the profession, but it’s also the source of all the problems we have. I’m not sure what would be the best way to deal with it, but it’s a double edged weapon. It makes the profession special, but it keeps the limiations and nerfs comming.
Initiative is definitely the cause of most of the problems.
P/P is a prime example – the main reason it’s so bad is because the bread and butter DPS skill shares a resource with all of the utility skills. This means that you’re always over-sacrificing in one area or the other. Trying to push good DPS out of P/P requires sacrificing all of its mobility and utility. Trying to get any mobility or utility out of P/P means tanking your DPS. Granted, there are options for addressing this within the context of Initiative (like buffing Vital Shot so you aren’t so dependent on Unload for DPS), but nevertheless it wouldn’t be as much of an issue with cooldowns.
I may be the newb on this one, but I’m completely missing the logic of this thread. The defining characteristic of the thief is what is wrong with the thief? The “many options, one defining resource” shared by… hell, games going back as far as time, and the very foundation of a modern economy, is the single major flaw of the thief’s character design?
Yeah, you do lose damage when you use utilities. You lose damage when you take a non-damage utility power on any class. You lose damage when you gear or spec for survivability. You lose damage when you go for ranged over melee. This kind of balancing act exists clear across the game. What makes initiative different other than other classes not having this particular axis? I’m not seeing it. This just sounds like a witch hunt at face value.
So before, dagger thieves were spamming heartseeker. Even the most unpopular of builds and personally my favorite, P/P thieves are only using Unload.
Not saying the initiative system needs to be changed but man, at least take some effort to make other skills competitive and not one uber dominant skill with each weapon.
thieves are built for burst…so they burst then they are out of init and sitting ducks. be happy they spam HS….its actually a good thing for you and bad for them. Unload is a bunch of small hits that add up but if u roll u dodge 3 hits. :P run back and forth and some miss too.
still not seeing how initiative is the problem. its only the problem if you want to copy the other classes.
complaining about skill useage? that doesnt matter so long as we can perform (which i admit, for reasons other then initiative therer are problems with that)
if you want to be a thief, be a thief, if you want every skill to be high damage and basically press them in sequence, pick another class.
I’m no expert, but I’m with Wolfe on this. The problem is that you view the thief the same as the other classes when they are not the same at all.
Key differences with weapon skills
Thief – manages initiative as a resource (similar to “mana” from other games)
Others – manage cooldowns as a resource
All none thief weapon skills (not auto attacks either) have cooldowns. Other classes have to cycle their damage skills for maximum uptime on highest damage skills and minimum uptime on lowest damage skills.
Thieves spam 1 damage skill and weave in utilities based on the situation.
There is the argument that thieves lose damage when using a utility weapon skill. That is true. 5 HK’s is more damage than 4HK’s + shadow shot. The same is true for other classes. Suppose 1123 is the highest damage cycle of x class and 4 would be a utility skill. 1123 would deal more damage than 1124.
So, it’s not that initiative is bad. Initiative is different.
Initiative is definitely the cause of most of the problems.
P/P is a prime example – the main reason it’s so bad is because the bread and butter DPS skill shares a resource with all of the utility skills. This means that you’re always over-sacrificing in one area or the other. Trying to push good DPS out of P/P requires sacrificing all of its mobility and utility. Trying to get any mobility or utility out of P/P means tanking your DPS. Granted, there are options for addressing this within the context of Initiative (like buffing Vital Shot so you aren’t so dependent on Unload for DPS), but nevertheless it wouldn’t be as much of an issue with cooldowns.
Great example. Although we can spam heartseeker or what have you, our utility skills are then useless as we expended our only resource for activating them. And the term “utility” really is used too loosely when discussing the thief. We really dont have “utility” skills. In my opinion, CnD is useful but 6 initiative? that seems counterproductive seeing as it kind of makes a useful skill useless…the same goes for the others.
In that example, the P/P weapon set is bad, not initiative. More specifically, initiative costs of the P/P weapon set is bad, not initiative.
In your example on CnD, CnD provides a 3 sec invi at the cost of 6 initiative. Let’s transfer that to a “non-thief” not using initiative.
- 1 ini recharges at 1.33 sec
- 3 sec invi every 7.98 sec (8 sec) OR a 6 sec invi every 15.96 sec (16 sec)
- 3 sec invi recover 2 ini (2.66 sec) OR 6 sec invi recovers 4 ini (5.32 sec)
And take note, invi is not the only thing CnD provides.
You ask “CnD is useful, but 6 initiative?”, I (as someone who also plays non thieves) would ask “CnD is useful, but why only an 8 sec cd?”
In that example, the P/P weapon set is bad, not initiative. More specifically, initiative costs of the P/P weapon set is bad, not initiative.
In your example on CnD, CnD provides a 3 sec invi at the cost of 6 initiative. Let’s transfer that to a “non-thief” not using initiative.
- 1 ini recharges at 1.33 sec
- 3 sec invi every 7.98 sec (8 sec) OR a 6 sec invi every 15.96 sec (16 sec)
- 3 sec invi recover 2 ini (2.66 sec) OR 6 sec invi recovers 4 ini (5.32 sec)And take note, invi is not the only thing CnD provides.
You ask “CnD is useful, but 6 initiative?”, I (as someone who also plays non thieves) would ask “CnD is useful, but why only an 8 sec cd?”
Also consider, that while your math may have shown that it doesnt have a long cooldown, you dont realize that using CnD takes a massive chunk out of the thief’s initiative pool. So when I say useless, i suppose dont take it to mean that CnD is useless, more so that it is less useful. Meaning that it may be a great skill, but the fact that the ini cost is so high, that it really makes it a skill to use sparingly as it renders the thief almost out of ini when used.
The initiative system is great. I love it.
You can’t go around heart seeker spamming or else you will quickly run out of initiative. You need to learn how to conserve it.
If you’re constantly running into low initiative problems, I suggest you re-trait to gain quicker initiative regeneration and increase cap of initiative. Also consider using the Signet that provides you with 1 extra initiative per 10 seconds.
I once had huge issues with the initiative system but after learning how to conserve the it and by understanding other classes skills… you can learn when to time your attacks.
It’s only a huge chunk if you “make it a huge chunk”. 6 initiative is HUGE when you only have 6 initiative (way more with less initiative or none at all). It’s not as much when you have 15 with 3 ini from trait and signet just around the corner.
…You ask “CnD is useful, but 6 initiative?”, I (as someone who also plays non thieves) would ask “CnD is useful, but why only an 8 sec cd?”
It’s a cool down that is shared by all weaponskills (except #1)
every build has mostly 1 damage skill. the rest are situational utility.
the damage skill is situational …
initiative is good. you have to know when and why use it and you have to know if you’ll need it later or if you can burn it all now
it gives us a lot of freedom and makes our gameplay more funny than a system based on forced cooldown and skill rotation.
Black Thunders [BT] – Gandara
Initiative is the best thing about the thief. It may cause the odd nerf here and there and prevent us from having effects such as burning on our weapon skills, but it more than makes up for it in other ways. For one thing it allows the thief to react to the moment better than any other profession. If you try to daze your target but the attack gets blocked, you can still daze them if needed (assuming you are using your initiative well).
Due to initiative, the thief can deal with difficult situations extremely well. So while it may have its negatives, it has some amazing positives to counteract them. I would be very disappointed if they removed initiative.