Guild Wars 2

It seems to me that if ANET reduced the downtime in between battles with the quick health regeneration out of combat, that they should do the same for a thief’s initiative. Half the time i’ll find myself fully healed and ready to jump into combat again after a quick brawl, but I need to hang back in order to let my initiative fully fill. This is just plain counter intuitive to the “less downtime” strategy ANET seemed to want for their game. Am I the only one this is bothering?

Don’t get me wrong, it is annoying but no other class has their cooldowns reset between fights which is a direct comparison of systems (one of the few that can be made with initiative).

I have to say no, since it would make your class even easier.

How about in PvE only than, playing a DD thief in PvE isn’t terribly easy.

I was going to agree with you FWV and argue that it’d be a good idea as long as the timer before “quick initiative regen” kicks in is longer than the quick health regen timer, but Coffeebot makes an extremely good point that seems to nullify your proposal.

To Coffeebot’s point, I’d like to counter that unlike with all the other classes, melee thieves without initiative = instant death.

Which is why you should actively avoid combat when you’re not prepared for it…

Like everyone else does…

Yeah, I have been actively avoiding combat when unprepared… but the whole reason of this post was to point out that the slow initiative regen out of combat doesn’t really follow ANET’s stated objective of trying to reduce the down time between fights, or to put it another way, help prepare us more quickly for combat. That’s why they gave us quick health regen ooc. I don’t see what you were trying to add with that rottaran…

And yeah I understand that while other classes cooldowns don’t speed up ooc, melee thieves are basically impotent sitting ducks without their skills far more so than any of the other classes. Also, maybe some of you don’t realize this, but you wouldn’t be getting more initiative than you otherwise would have in combat. The only thing that would change is the time you spend standing around waiting for your initiative to fill inbetween fights. I don’t see why anyone would have a problem with this. It simply makes for smoother gameplay.

FWB.1704:

Yeah, I have been actively avoiding combat when unprepared… but the whole reason of this post was to point out that the slow initiative regen out of combat doesn’t really follow ANET’s stated objective of trying to reduce the down time between fights, or to put it another way, help prepare us more quickly for combat. That’s why they gave us quick health regen ooc. I don’t see what you were trying to add with that rottaran…

And yeah I understand that while other classes cooldowns don’t speed up ooc, melee thieves are basically impotent sitting ducks without their skills far more so than any of the other classes. Also, maybe some of you don’t realize this, but you wouldn’t be getting more initiative than you otherwise would have in combat. The only thing that would change is the time you spend standing around waiting for your initiative to fill inbetween fights. I don’t see why anyone would have a problem with this. It simply makes for smoother gameplay.

To add onto what’s already been said, keep in mind that, while you may be a sitting duck w/o initiative, full initiative = much stronger thief. Thief’s shouldn’t be able to full burst any faster than they already can after just depleting all their initiative on a now-dead enemy. If it’s that problematic for you, you may want to look into better initiative management.

As other have said waiting for your Initiative to recharge is the same as other profession wait for their skills to recharge. If other profession can only use their auto attack they are neither powerhorses.
Why don’t you use the same tactic other professions utilize as well: Don’t fire off all your cooldowns against a single foe so you still can use some of your skills against the next foe?

FWB.1704:

How about in PvE only than, playing a DD thief in PvE isn’t terribly easy.

The differences between PvE and PvP should be as small as possible so its easy for players to cross to the other side.

Well a thief usually only has full ini at the beginning of a fight anyways, you’re still using it at the same rate during a fight and still have to manage it when fighting pretty much anything, multiple mobs especially. But like health regen ooc there won’t be any mobs attacking you while regening. This won’t make thieves “burst faster” in combat, or give them an edge in combat in any way. All this would do is reduce the time between combats. As it stands now after killing an enemy you just stand around for a while before heading to the next guy who’s just out of range, the same way you do for health with any class, only this takes much longer.

If you finished every fight (PvE) at 50% health which isn’t unreasonable for a thief, and in the time it takes for you to regen to 100% you would also regen 15 initiative points.

If it takes 5 seconds after the end of combat to get to 100% health and given that thieves are a spammy profession to begin with, we would become ridiculously powerful in 1v1 chain farming with that improved initiative regen.

3 Unloads or 3 Pistol Whips kill most mobs and also use most of out initiative, if we could then just wait 5 seconds and do it again it would be counter-productive.

I’m just rambling here… but it would be a bad idea from a speed killing point of view and it would also cause some people to want their cooldowns to reset between fights aswell.

But most thieves already just stand around and wait for their ini to regen ooc anyways. So when fighting in PvE why would it matter. Your performance in combat would be no different. I generally manage ini equal to the amount of guys i’ll be fighting so I don’t run out early.
I can see why you might use more powerful skills against a single normal mob to kill them slightly more quickly if you know you have quick ini regen ooc. But In 1v1 on a normal mob, you’re not going to die anyways. However, any more mobs than that and you have to manage your ini because you’ll likely go through it all before they’re dead.

Thus faster ini regen out of combat wouldn’t benefit you in any fight in which you might die (i.e. the ones you need to manage ini for). The only time it would help are those situations when fighting 1v1 against a normal mob, which don’t matter since you’re guaranteed to kill them anyways, least of all if you’re trying to “farm” ( attacking 1 mob at a time is a horrible way to farm).
I don’t see why waiting those 5 seconds would make an a huge negative impact on how you play your thief, except that you’d have less of that boring downtime in between fights.

Look, they (and by “they,” I mean “the other 7 classes and many thieves”) already think we’re completely broken and need savagely nerfed. How bout we all just wait the extra 0.5 seconds till your initiative refills. If you’re destroying trash mobs for minutes on end, try treating it like a marathon and not a sprint. Use 2 more auto-attacks and 1 less HS or something.

I think you mean broken in PvP. In PvE, especially dungeon running, (melee) thieves aren’t that survivable.