Guild Wars 2

Hello, thief community! I am a mesmer and am ignorant of your problems and struggles with your class! I am here to discuss interaction between thieves and the Mesmer Grandmaster trait [Power Block].

Power Block:
Enemy skills that you interrupt have an increased cooldown.

Duration: 10 s
————————————

As you may or may not know, when a skill is interrupted it normally goes on a 5 second cool down. Power Block increases that cool down to 10 seconds. This, however, does not work against thieves.

Thief skills, when they are interrupted, do not go on a cool down. This is all dandy, as they lose initiative used for the skill interrupted[though I recently learned that that may not be the case in certain situations, but that’s not important for this discussion.].

However Power Block, a trait which essentially effects only the timed cool down, does nothing against interrupted initiative skills. This, I believe, is a very big flaw in the design of the trait. There have been discussions about interaction with a thief’s initiative. I’m not going to suggest anything ridiculous like doubling the initiative taken, like some have, however I do believe there is need for Power Block to effect thieves in some way. Remember that it is not that the thief’s mechanic is no cool down, but that the thief skills share a universal CD pool called initiative.

Personal Suggestion: Drain 3 additional initiative on interrupt.

Other Suggestions: Stall initiative generation for a period of time[?].

What is your, the thief community’s, opinion on this matter? How do you want it handled, if at all?

I ask you because I know that I don’t know thief. Thus, I hope you will try to see this not as an attack against thieves but as an oversight that should be looked at.

I’d gladly accept as a thief a drain of 1/2 ini from Power Block, only if we can get two separate ini bars, one for each weapon.

Give it a hard 2.5 second forced recharge for everything. Add 2.5 seconds to things that normally have a 5 second recharge. That is what power block should be.

Dondagora.9645:

What is your, the thief community’s, opinion on this matter? How do you want it handled, if at all?

I feel there is a whole host of different ways to deal with a general thief. I think your main gripe as a mesmer is S/D thieves as you pretty much need hard CC to make them think twice. I think the changes to s/d coming next patch is going to up a more diverse set of disables for the s/d thief and will allow you to burn more of their initiative before they can do any real damage to you.

What people who don’t play thief (at least not competetively) dont understand is that iniative is the cooldown not just for 1 skill, but for ALL 10 Weapon skills we have. Taking 3 initiative on a powerblock interrupt would be similar to putting ALL weapon skills on a 1-3 sec cooldown. Now you tell me if that is overpowered or not?
The only thing that would be an option is indeed lock out the skill that was interrupted for 5 sec (the 5 additional seconds you get on oother professions) but that will be hard to implement i think.
Otherwise, be happy you can still interrupt our heal (in case of hide in shadow), and shadow refuge. those are the skills that keep us alive in tight spots anyay so those are the ones you should be interrupting.

second choice ‘stop Ini regen’ is better (for you).

If your interrupt just burn more 3 Ini it wont effect thief that already use all his Ini.
(especially spammer)

wait… what did I just said. oh no… Mesmer magic. I should have known >,.<

Chicago Jack.5647:

Dondagora.9645:

What is your, the thief community’s, opinion on this matter? How do you want it handled, if at all?

I feel there is a whole host of different ways to deal with a general thief. I think your main gripe as a mesmer is S/D thieves as you pretty much need hard CC to make them think twice. I think the changes to s/d coming next patch is going to up a more diverse set of disables for the s/d thief and will allow you to burn more of their initiative before they can do any real damage to you.

mesmer here o/

isnt the skill 3 , first part, an evade? how is it interruptable as mesmer?

Wyrden.4713:

Chicago Jack.5647:

Dondagora.9645:

What is your, the thief community’s, opinion on this matter? How do you want it handled, if at all?

I feel there is a whole host of different ways to deal with a general thief. I think your main gripe as a mesmer is S/D thieves as you pretty much need hard CC to make them think twice. I think the changes to s/d coming next patch is going to up a more diverse set of disables for the s/d thief and will allow you to burn more of their initiative before they can do any real damage to you.

mesmer here o/

isnt the skill 3 , first part, an evade? how is it interruptable as mesmer?

Yes it’s an evade but there are moments when you can interrupt it, such as when you first start the skill it doesn’t instantly evade so it’s interruptible and at the end of the skill there is a short frame of time where the sword 3 can still be interrupted.

Just throw a scepter in your MH and laugh at the teef corpses that pile up….

Mesmers need nothing vs teefs and is simply a l2p issue

T raw.4658:

Just throw a scepter in your MH and laugh at the teef corpses that pile up….

Mesmers need nothing vs teefs and is simply a l2p issue

So thieves want all mesmers roll to condie afk build? Ok, as you wish

This isn’t a QQ about thieves, for those of you misunderstanding. I personally am fine with a mesmer’s place against thieves, it’s a l2p issue, mainly, and not having a counter for a thief’s mobility and stealth and spam are an issue with the build and/or player.

What I’m asking about here is consistency within the game. It is not that interrupts don’t punish thieves, but that the trait which should increase the base punishment of interrupts does not do so for thief initiative skills, which I see as a hole in the trait design.

I am not pretending to know everything about thieves, so that’s why I’m asking, what do you thieves believe the best adjustment for initiative skill interaction with Power Block is?

@Pinkcomet
That’s a good point, pausing initiative regen for a second or however long might be a less situational effect than initiative draining.

Dondagora.9645:

This isn’t a QQ about thieves, for those of you misunderstanding. I personally am fine with a mesmer’s place against thieves, it’s a l2p issue, mainly, and not having a counter for a thief’s mobility and stealth and spam are an issue with the build and/or player.

What I’m asking about here is consistency within the game. It is not that interrupts don’t punish thieves, but that the trait which should increase the base punishment of interrupts does not do so for thief initiative skills, which I see as a hole in the trait design.

I am not pretending to know everything about thieves, so that’s why I’m asking, what do you thieves believe the best adjustment for initiative skill interaction with Power Block is?

@Pinkcomet
That’s a good point, pausing initiative regen for a second or however long might be a less situational effect than initiative draining.

Look, if you really don’t understand and are not trolling, I will explain it to you. The reason as to why Power Block does not affect thief is because it will break the thief class. For the same reason why summon clones does not reveal a stealth mesmer, decoy bypass reveal, or how you can’t dodge a phast summon. It will break the mesmer class if everything is consistence across all professions.

MIrra.3604:

Dondagora.9645:

This isn’t a QQ about thieves, for those of you misunderstanding. I personally am fine with a mesmer’s place against thieves, it’s a l2p issue, mainly, and not having a counter for a thief’s mobility and stealth and spam are an issue with the build and/or player.

What I’m asking about here is consistency within the game. It is not that interrupts don’t punish thieves, but that the trait which should increase the base punishment of interrupts does not do so for thief initiative skills, which I see as a hole in the trait design.

I am not pretending to know everything about thieves, so that’s why I’m asking, what do you thieves believe the best adjustment for initiative skill interaction with Power Block is?

@Pinkcomet
That’s a good point, pausing initiative regen for a second or however long might be a less situational effect than initiative draining.

Look, if you really don’t understand and are not trolling, I will explain it to you. The reason as to why Power Block does not affect thief is because it will break the thief class. For the same reason why summon clones does not reveal a stealth mesmer, decoy bypass reveal, or how you can’t dodge a phast summon. It will break the mesmer class if everything is consistence across all professions.

No, of course I understand why it does not force thief skills to have a cool down. That would break one of the core mechanics of the class[Initiative, universal CD pool]. However, I believe that there should be some sort of interaction between the thief and power block or else it is a trait that makes an exception of an entire class, not just a build or two. As such, it isn’t as if I don’t understand the thief to some extent, however I don’t want to act as if I play it and can therefore speak like I know best for balance. What I’m asking is what kind of interaction thieves believe might be good at adding the same kind of punishment Power Block is supposed to toward interrupted initiative skills without breaking the class altogether.

As for those inconsistencies about mesmers are probably true[though I believe you’re talking about the dodge-clone with stealth?]. Yet that has no bearing whatsoever on this discussion. They may be issues or inconsistencies, but they are not the ones being discussed here nor do they have common factors with this issue. This is an inconsistency with a class’s mechanics ignoring the mechanics of a trait. Those that you mentioned are simply faults or mechanics of skills, which can be discussed in a thread more dedicated to them if you wish it[Personally think Decoy should be effected by Revealed].

I am not, I repeat, attempting to have Power Block add 10 second CDs to thief skills on interrupt.

Or put that skill on 3s or 4s CD? Not too much, not too low, and the overall drainage to universal thief CD/initiative is the initiative they spent on that skill. Thieves can still survive/continue attack with other skills. I play both mesmer and thief and I don’t feel that a whole class ignores a GM trait regardless of builds is justified. It is clearly not a l2p issue when a GM trait, game system not skill level, almost completely doesn’t work on thieves.

You guys do realize most thief utilities are either instant cast, or have 0.25s (eg. shadow refuge as a gentleman kindly mentioned above) or 0.5s cast time right? Do you honestly think mesmers have good chance of interrupting those skills easily? The only two easy things to interrupt is hide in shadows and basilisk venom (plus a good thief will use distance or stealth to cover these skill). Most of the time its either too late or just simple cc that has no interrupt/power block proc.

NICENIKESHOE.7128:

Do you honestly think mesmers have good chance of interrupting those skills easily?

I’ll preface by saying, assuming all other things being equal…

The critical skills to interrupt are sword 3, heartseeker, and hide in shadows. All three of them, with maybe the exception of sword 3 (as it requires better timing), are very do-able – especially with the changes to mind stab as it is a reliable blind clear. I think for a class where the main source of damage is sitting at 1.2k range should have a difficult time when a person tries to punch them in the face.

I especially think that, if you’re using your positioning wisely and a thief (or any other melee focused class) tries to jump you, they would seriously be out of position and you and your team/group should be able to capitalize on that with good reaction times. However I don’t think you should be able to easily handle it on your own and instead give you some survivability + a bit of dps while you and another person handle the situation or provide enough time to rotate someone else in. Above all, I don’t think it should be an easy fight for you. Which is part of the reason why I don’t think sword damage should be improved on the mesmer – the other being the fact that you have phantasms.

That being said, S/D still needed to be tampered with as it can easily dodge/remove most peeling mechanics that would easily kill a d/p thief and we’ll see how it functions when the patch goes through.

When thieves get a spammable weapon skill that has more than .5s of stun, more than .25s of daze, any kind of knockback/knockdown, and more than 1s of immobilize, you can penalize it however you like. Until then, stop complaining about how the initiative system works.

People pretend as though the init system is nothing but beneficial. If you played the class, you’d realize that one of the drawbacks to spammable weapon skills is that no weapon skill can have solid CC attached to them (except stealth skills which have an artifical CD with revealed). Let’s also remember that init is 1 pool shared between 2 weapons, where as every other class has at minimum 2 unique pools of CD’s.

This isn’t a complaint mind you – the init system certainly has its benefits, but it also has costs that most posters are blind to. I understand that OP made it a point to explain he didn’t know about thieves well enough to judge whether or not his idea was good – please don’t post changes to things you don’t understand. Bad players and trolls are just going to pick it up and run with it.

I only play thief, and back when it DID work, I would literally not know what to do, as I am so used to not having cooldowns. I think your idea would be fair, but the other idea could be fair too. Instead of a cooldown, initiative can not be recovered for 5 or 10 seconds might work, so a thief would need to be careful but would still have options. Giving a thief a cooldown on an initiative skill would work against the system, especially since a lot of the thieves rotations depend on using a skill more than once.

CobOfCorn.6352:

I only play thief

No, you don’t, and I have proof. See below.

Instead of a cooldown, initiative can not be recovered for 5 or 10 seconds might work, so a thief would need to be careful but would still have options.

CobOfCorn.6352:

Instead of a cooldown, initiative can not be recovered for 5 or 10 seconds might work, so a thief would need to be careful but would still have options.

WTF!!

No ini regen for 5 seconds – “still have options”? If the options are “die now” and “die in 4 seconds”, ok. Cause there’d be no other options available.

How about we start small? pausing initiative regen clock for 1-2 seconds?

Dondagora.9645:

How about we start small? pausing initiative regen clock for 1-2 seconds?

Fine as is

l2p

The precedent in the game doesn’t work for you. The Chill condition also affects cooldowns, making them take longer to recharge. If it was intended for skills/traits that modify cooldowns to affect Thief weapon skills, Chill would already be doing that. But it doesn’t affect that, and devs in the past have said that Chill not doing anything to Initiative skills is intentional.

You’ll just have to accept that Power Block isn’t going to be quite as useful against a Thief as against other classes. Look on the bright side, when you interrupt Hide in Shadows using your Power Block trait, you’re going to get a dead Thief.

T raw.4658:

Dondagora.9645:

How about we start small? pausing initiative regen clock for 1-2 seconds?

Fine as is

l2p

I don’t even use the trait. I just believe it should interact with initiative. And I am not complaining about thieves being overpowered or too strong. Once you stop their movement, bursting them down is usually easy. Confusion also kills thieves as fast. That’s not even important.

A l2p issue is if I had a problem against thieves. This is a thread about allowing a trait to effect everything equally. Thieves are in a particular situation with Power Block because putting them on CD would break their class. Anything too big like doubling the initiative toll also breaks the class. Many ways the trait could theoretically interact with thieves could break the class. Which is why I’m asking for a very small, yet somewhat significant interaction which will not break the class by asking the thief community’s opinions on such. Please understand what I’m trying to say without thinking I’m doing this in a grudge against you or your class or because I blame the trait for my lack of skill.

Xiahou Mao.9701:

The precedent in the game doesn’t work for you. The Chill condition also affects cooldowns, making them take longer to recharge. If it was intended for skills/traits that modify cooldowns to affect Thief weapon skills, Chill would already be doing that. But it doesn’t affect that, and devs in the past have said that Chill not doing anything to Initiative skills is intentional.

You’ll just have to accept that Power Block isn’t going to be quite as useful against a Thief as against other classes. Look on the bright side, when you interrupt Hide in Shadows using your Power Block trait, you’re going to get a dead Thief.

You may be right, but my OCD about this trait is annoying me endlessly. I just feel like it should do something, though I know the devs have also stated that it not effecting initiative is intentional. However, this makes the trait even weaker than it already is[not that all classes don’t have the problem with the new traits].

Chill actually worked against Initiative in beta. It broke the class completely. Literally. It couldn’t win against anything with Chill, you would just melt instantly. Thus, it got reverted for later beta weekends.

I can assume that Power Block’s interaction with Thieves has already been discussed and concluded that the damage would be too severe.

Your OCD will just have to accept that unless they go back and rework Chill to reduce Initiative regeneration rates, there’s not going to be any change to Power Block. When it debuted Power Block actually did force cooldowns on Thief skills (and a lot of NPC skills that weren’t meant to have them), and that was deemed to be a bug and fixed.

It’s pretty clear that they don’t intend to have Power Block have any special functionality towards Initiative skills.

Xiahou Mao.9701:

It’s pretty clear that they don’t intend to have Power Block have any special functionality towards Initiative skills.

No, they just failed again and added 1 more bug to mesmers 30+ list of bugs

Xiahou Mao.9701:

It’s pretty clear that they don’t intend to have Power Block have any special functionality towards Initiative skills.

It still doubles the interrupt cooldown effect, just like it does for any other skill

I am a thief and am ignorant of mesmer problems and struggles against thieves!

stof.9341:

Xiahou Mao.9701:

It’s pretty clear that they don’t intend to have Power Block have any special functionality towards Initiative skills.

It still doubles the interrupt cooldown effect, just like it does for any other skill

…Touché, friend, touché.

Tao.5096:

I am a thief and am ignorant of mesmer problems and struggles against thieves!

lets help them understand

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Why-are-mesmers-designed-to-be-thief-food/first