Guild Wars 2

On papper it looks great, in practice, it is BY FAR THE WORST TRAIT IN THE GAME! Please take it out.

They should switch it with Hidden thief, which would like Kleptomaniac…make sense given the other minor traits.

ensoriki.5789:

They should switch it with Hidden thief, which would like Kleptomaniac…make sense given the other minor traits.

They should switch it, but I dont think they should switch it with Hidden Thief. Overall, you would no longer be able to CnD > Steal > Backstab combo, as CnD would go off knocking you out of stealth, thus lowering the overall burst.

Honestly it’s useless since it is uncommon to just have your health fall below 25%. Usually hits will hit you for that much, and then more making Last Refuge activate as your going down to the ground. Makes it rather useless.

^
not only that but also if you’re in a fight and you get hit mid cnd (happens all the time), the cnd will break your stealth instead of stealthing you (usually getting you killed).

Either take it out all together or replace it with something that every sa thief should use and put it on the passive bar. Either the 2 ini on stealth or cleanse on stealth or blind on stealth. Any would fit the bar and all would be 10000000000x better than last refuge.

Any trait would be better than last refuge. But minor traits like that aren’t meant to be as powerful as Shadow’s Embrace or Infusion of Shadow. The problem of last refuge isn’t that it’s bad but that it’s borderline harmful.

Unless we replace it with something completely different, I’d suggest we keep it to an action that fits the name. IE, instead of using the skill “Blinding Powder” for free when bellow 25%, it could create a smoke screen the same as “Black Powder” ?

But then it would look too much like Concealed Defeat :/

There’s a number of ways last refuge could suck less – There is definitely no way to fix the stealth functionality, it should just be completely scrapped and replaced.

It could throw down a trap (discussion pending about which trap would be best, but probably needle or tripwire), it could summon a short duration (think 8-10s) version of the ambush trap thief, it could grant a few seconds of fury/might/swiftness (although in a defensive tree, thief is a pretty “offense is the best defense” style class, and feel it would be fitting), there are a number of possibilities. Why this trait which almost always actively hinders a thief still exists is beyond me.

Something simple like vigor on stealth, or something to fix this stealth nerf, reduce revealed time by 1s. I’d take either and be happy.

I was thinking that very thing before, Vigor on stealth would be awesome.

As far as i remember , last refuge saved my kitten a bit much, dont know why if its bugging you guys, yeah but maybe not that much. If you guys think that <25% hp – defensive-skill-proc is useless, try to look at Runes of Vampirism’s #6 benefit ,which turns you into a mist when you fell below 10% hp, which is 1.) You’d die before it procs or 2.) It proc, but you’d die because of condi damage, which is a pain in the kitten while having 10%hp, or less. But all around, last refuge DID save my kitten a bit much , and still i think, if the devs plan to change that trait, ill still agree.

Noktern.1395:

As far as i remember , last refuge saved my kitten a bit much, dont know why if its bugging you guys, yeah but maybe not that much. If you guys think that <25% hp – defensive-skill-proc is useless, try to look at Runes of Vampirism’s #6 benefit ,which turns you into a mist when you fell below 10% hp, which is 1.) You’d die before it procs or 2.) It proc, but you’d die because of condi damage, which is a pain in the kitten while having 10%hp, or less. But all around, last refuge DID save my kitten a bit much , and still i think, if the devs plan to change that trait, ill still agree.

The problem is, if it procs mid-swing, you will instantly leave stealth, triggering revealed for 4 seconds. Remember, you were on 25%? Oops, so you needed that stealth to survive?
Best if it procs in the mid of a CnD animation

naphack.9346:

The problem is, if it procs mid-swing, you will instantly leave stealth, triggering revealed for 4 seconds. Remember, you were on 25%? Oops, so you needed that stealth to survive?
Best if it procs in the mid of a CnD animation

Haha yes i understand the deffect, i remember experienced that silly moments when last refuge proced and iam at mid-swing and revealed pops out, then i died. Then yeah, ill agree that this trait is kinda broken, need a bit tweak

I think the funniest death cause of Last Refuge comes from this post : https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Last-Refuge-strikes-again/first

I was about 30% health. I saw 12 stacks of confusion on me but I decided to heal anyways. Then bam bam I’m down.

I forgot about that stupid kitten Last Refuge trait. Confusion hit me as soon as I started my heal and it proc Last Refuge which triggers confusion again.

You know a trait is THAT BAD when people would rather have NO TRAIT at all in its place than have it.

Honestly Last Refuge kills you far more times than it saves your life and the fact that there is no way to disable it and that it is located in one of the most important.traitlines for stealth makes it even worse.

How many times have I seen this particular threat? Yes since BETA but you know what? Dev is busy fixing and improving Ele and Mesmer who is not strong enough yet. Maybe in the next 2 years they will do something about Last Refuge.

Yeah this has saved my bacon quite a number of times, however i don’t use CnD or rely on stealth s much. I can see however what a pain it could be, in that scenario it’s quite a borked mechanic.

Here’s an idea: What if Last Refuge provided 1 or 2 seconds where you couldn’t fall below 1 hp?

This would make it sort of a last ditch ability to give yourself a couple more seconds to react, stealthed even, to whatever is going on. Even so, I don’t feel like this would be TOO overpowered because if you have a condition on you or the person attacking you is providing any sort of continuous damage at all, you still die. Plus it has a loooooong cooldown (which could even be made longer).

I guess there’s a reason it’s the ‘last’ refuge. :P

Pawstruck.9708:

Here’s an idea: What if Last Refuge provided 1 or 2 seconds where you couldn’t fall below 1 hp?

This would make it sort of a last ditch ability to give yourself a couple more seconds to react, stealthed even, to whatever is going on. Even so, I don’t feel like this would be TOO overpowered because if you have a condition on you or the person attacking you is providing any sort of continuous damage at all, you still die. Plus it has a loooooong cooldown (which could even be made longer).

I think this is a good idea. Could use some modifying of which I wont do since I’m lazy right now :p but you have a point. As I’ve said before, as a thief when our health is close to 25%, the next hits or hits will down us pretty much after that making last refuge always activate as your on the ground. Not much help there now is it?

Straegen.2938:

Possible outcomes when this does or could fire:

1. Player would die with or without this skill as the incoming damage is AoE from multiple targets

2. It fires, cloaks the user and applies blinds to everything nearby giving them a couple seconds to react accordingly.

3. It fires but doesn’t cloak because the user is revealed. All nearby targets still get blinded

4. It cloaks and targets are blinded but because the player is a keyboard spam monkey or hit bad timing they inadvertently apply the reveal debuf which MIGHT cause them to die.

In case 1, doesn’t matter. In case 2 and 3, it is actually a very good ability. Only in case 4 under fairly rare circumstances does it suck. The number of times 4 hits over 1-3 for a disciplined player is really, really slim. Ultimately this skill probably saves people thanks to blinding far more than it messes them up.

Unless you happen to be reduced to 25% of less health mid skill execution – which happens all the kitten time. If my health is hovering around 30%…I’m probably doing kitten – trying to finish the fight, running away, trying to enter stealth…etc.

Taking an inadvertent revealed debuff kind of sucks in any situation – It’s catastrophic when I’m at 25% health. Its hilariously sad when it happens mid HS out of a BP.

Straegen.2938:

evilapprentice.6379:

Unless you happen to be reduced to 25% of less health mid skill execution – which happens all the kitten time. If my health is hovering around 30%…I’m probably doing kitten – trying to finish the fight, running away, trying to enter stealth…etc.

Taking an inadvertent revealed debuff kind of sucks in any situation – It’s catastrophic when I’m at 25% health. Its hilariously sad when it happens mid HS out of a BP.

Even in that circumstance, it is still useful as the next attack by the enemy(s) is a complete miss and HS still lands. If a thief is down to the wire on HP, that blind is incredibly important. It is likely the difference between one HS and two. People are only focusing on the stealth but ignoring the benefits of the blindness condition.

This ability firing mid-attack will happen but it costing a player a significant number of fights is highly unlikely. I think people are just remembering those half dozen fights it cost them and are blowing over X times more often that blindness saved them.

This is only true of enemies within a small radius of you, and even then only of one potential hit, meaning without the stealth aspect to break targeting anything that makes lots of fast attacks will be minimally affected. So… if someone is hitting you with a hammer or a very painful and close-ranged utility, sure.

Straegen.2938:

evilapprentice.6379:

Unless you happen to be reduced to 25% of less health mid skill execution – which happens all the kitten time. If my health is hovering around 30%…I’m probably doing kitten – trying to finish the fight, running away, trying to enter stealth…etc.

Taking an inadvertent revealed debuff kind of sucks in any situation – It’s catastrophic when I’m at 25% health. Its hilariously sad when it happens mid HS out of a BP.

Even in that circumstance, it is still useful as the next attack by the enemy(s) is a complete miss and HS still lands. If a thief is down to the wire on HP, that blind is incredibly important. It is likely the difference between one HS and two. People are only focusing on the stealth but ignoring the benefits of the blindness condition.

This ability firing mid-attack will happen but it costing a player a significant number of fights is highly unlikely. I think people are just remembering those half dozen fights it cost them and are blowing over X times more often that blindness saved them because it was applied automatically.

What other class even sometimes pays a cost for their 25% trigger trait?

Also in my specific example, there’s a good chance they were already blinded by my BP, so last refuge was nothing but a hindrance. Specifically D/P relies alot on blind (and other things), so throwing another random blind in there doesn’t have the potential to help me much.

I personally (and alot of other thieves as well) don’t stealth as much as possible – I use it situationally when it’s needed. kittening up my stealth even once is a big issue, because I only use it when I need it, and I’m hovering around 25% health and I go to stealth, I probably really needed it. I don’t get protection or stability or an immune skill, so when you kitten with my stealth, it can be an extremely big deal. It also kittens with our on stealth traits, and is the first minor trait in the “on stealth traits” tree, so there’s that.

And I can’t speak for others, but I’m remembering the 95 or 100 times (rank 40, to put that number into perspective) last refuge has kittened me, not half a dozen. The amount of times in combat it’s fired and actually been useful is less than 10.

I don’t care even if it USUALLY works in your favor; a trait, let alone a required one, should not be detrimental.