Guild Wars 2

Quick Pockets: Gain 3 Initiative when you swap weapons in combat. Weapon Swap Cooldown is Reduced by 20%

Given that Quick Pockets was moved to compete with the ubiquitous Sleight of Hand GM, I feel that it deserves a buff. Swap CDR is both on theme for the trait and a great choice from a design standpoint for two reasons:

1: Thieves playing more with weapon swap would be particularly interesting because of how core combos and dual skills are to the class. Think about being able to Cnd-swap-Backstab in an s/d build, or having access to BP-Swap-HS for on demand stealth in a pistol whip build.

2: Quick Pockets is also a particularly good trait to buff because it rewards you for having two weapons sets you actually want to use in combat. There would be an actual trade-off between shortbow and sleight of hand for more mobility, and quick pockets for better performance in combat. As it is too much of the thief’s power is locked up in shortbow 5.

On a final note, it would be cool if this stacked with warrior runes for 6.4 second swap cooldown. Think about 3ini/6s.

Reduce it by 50% like Warrior’s Fast Hands trait, and you’ve got a deal! ;-)

Personally, I’m for instant-weapon swap (or 1-second cooldowns like Engineer kits) to be baseline. Either replace the Quick Pockets trait or give it a cooldown.

The Thief needs flexibility. Currently, when you have low/no initiative, swapping weapons is a punishment in that all it accomplishes is locks you into another weapon set for 10 seconds. Even with Quick Pockets (a trait that sacrifices a lot), you only gain enough initiative to do 1-out-of-4 skills on a weapon set only one time.

The alternative is to give each weapon set a separate initiative pool, or refill the single initiative pool (completely or significantly) on weapon swap. I’d prefer such a change to be baseline, but even a Quick Pockets that restored 8 initiative ever 10 seconds would be acceptable.

In that case, you would gain one attempt at Infiltrator’s Arrow to Escape, or one Cloak and Dagger/Black Powder+Heartseeker combo to Stealth, or one strong attack.

Kageseigi.2150:

Reduce it by 50% like Warrior’s Fast Hands trait, and you’ve got a deal! ;-)

Personally, I’m for instant-weapon swap (or 1-second cooldowns like Engineer kits) to be baseline. Either replace the Quick Pockets trait or give it a cooldown.

The Thief needs flexibility. Currently, when you have low/no initiative, swapping weapons is a punishment in that all it accomplishes is locks you into another weapon set for 10 seconds. Even with Quick Pockets (a trait that sacrifices a lot), you only gain enough initiative to do 1-out-of-4 skills on a weapon set only one time.

The alternative is to give each weapon set a separate initiative pool, or refill the single initiative pool (completely or significantly) on weapon swap. I’d prefer such a change to be baseline, but even a Quick Pockets that restored 8 initiative ever 10 seconds would be acceptable.

In that case, you would gain one attempt at Infiltrator’s Arrow to Escape, or one Cloak and Dagger/Black Powder+Heartseeker combo to Stealth, or one strong attack.

I like the reduced weapon swap cooldown idea for Quick Pockets, though I think a 50% reduction might be a bit much. I’m not sold on the idea of upping the initiative regen from Quick Pockets – it just turns us sort-of into Revenants who and almost forces us to swap weapons every 10 seconds or we’d be ‘wasting’ potential initiative.

Actually, I like even more your idea of a 1 second cooldown on weapon swapping. I had previously proposed that all professions have the weapon swap cooldown removed completely and replaced with a short cast time (probably 1/2 second) – Warrior’s Fast Hands and maybe Thief’s Quick Pockets could reduce it to 1/4 second.

I think there is a good reason for weapon swaps having significant cooldown. No CD weapon swaps multiply the number of skills and effects involved in the fight at any given time. If you look at other classes that exceed the normal weapon swap rate, namely elementalist and engineer, you can see that they pay for that power on each individual skill. Ele commonly looks at 30-40 second cooldowns on its weapon skills, and Engie gives up utility slots for its kits.

I wanted to keep quick pockets situated at a reasonable initiative gain rate. 3/8 is already more than any other guaranteed source of initiative gain. Perhaps it could go to 30%, and 50% with warrior runes, but any more than that and it does edge into OP territory, and you would have to take nerfs elsewhere.

Linnael.1069:

Quick Pockets: Gain 3 Initiative when you swap weapons in combat. Weapon Swap Cooldown is Reduced by 20%

Given that Quick Pockets was moved to compete with the ubiquitous Sleight of Hand GM, I feel that it deserves a buff. Swap CDR is both on theme for the trait and a great choice from a design standpoint for two reasons:

1: Thieves playing more with weapon swap would be particularly interesting because of how core combos and dual skills are to the class. Think about being able to Cnd-swap-Backstab in an s/d build, or having access to BP-Swap-HS for on demand stealth in a pistol whip build.

2: Quick Pockets is also a particularly good trait to buff because it rewards you for having two weapons sets you actually want to use in combat. There would be an actual trade-off between shortbow and sleight of hand for more mobility, and quick pockets for better performance in combat. As it is too much of the thief’s power is locked up in shortbow 5.

On a final note, it would be cool if this stacked with warrior runes for 6.4 second swap cooldown. Think about 3ini/6s.

You can also use it with primary and secondary set being the same such as pistol/pistol, and use it just to keep using unload

Linnael.1069:

I think there is a good reason for weapon swaps having significant cooldown. No CD weapon swaps multiply the number of skills and effects involved in the fight at any given time. If you look at other classes that exceed the normal weapon swap rate, namely elementalist and engineer, you can see that they pay for that power on each individual skill. Ele commonly looks at 30-40 second cooldowns on its weapon skills, and Engie gives up utility slots for its kits.

I wanted to keep quick pockets situated at a reasonable initiative gain rate. 3/8 is already more than any other guaranteed source of initiative gain. Perhaps it could go to 30%, and 50% with warrior runes, but any more than that and it does edge into OP territory, and you would have to take nerfs elsewhere.

I’m not sure that removing weapon swap cooldown will force many skill cooldowns to have a 30+ second cooldown, but I can agree with the validity of your concern. Ultimately I don’t think it’s a huge deal since we can already chain skills from two weapons once every 10-20 seconds limited by the weapon swap cooldown. In the absence of the weapon swap cooldown, individual skill cooldowns of 10-20 seconds would still place this limitation. The only place where I could see it being of a major concern is in potent combo’able skills which have short (<10 seconds) cooldown.

Anyways, I don’t mean to derail your thread by talking about entirely eliminating weapon swap cooldown here. I do agree with your original point that Quick Pockets is a little weak compared to the other Trickery GMs. I certainly don’t swap weapons often in combat unless I need SB (like you mentioned) for some mobility, and buffing this trait might introduce the viability of weapon swap in combat for Thief and make SB less of a requirement for 2nd weapon set.

Linnael.1069:

I think there is a good reason for weapon swaps having significant cooldown. No CD weapon swaps multiply the number of skills and effects involved in the fight at any given time. If you look at other classes that exceed the normal weapon swap rate, namely elementalist and engineer, you can see that they pay for that power on each individual skill. Ele commonly looks at 30-40 second cooldowns on its weapon skills, and Engie gives up utility slots for its kits.

In most cases, instant weapon could be bad. In the Thief’s case, it is debatable for several reasons…

1. The Thief is initiative based. Swapping weapons does not affect initiative (unless traited).

2. The Thief is an active playstyle/profession. Its success is based on the ability to adapt to the present situation. Being locked into a weapon set for an extended time period does not allow for that.

3. The Thief is not balanced compared to other professions. If built for pure power, it still cannot match the damage output of other professions. If built for pure sustainability, it still cannot withstand as much as other profession.

4a. The Elementalist has four different attunements (skill bars) + Utilities. That’s 20 skills + 5 utility skills for a total of 25 with separate cooldowns. The Engineer has one weapon set (skill bar) + up to five kits (skill bars) + up to five F-skills. That’s a total of 35 skills. The Thief has two weapon sets (skill bars) + five utilities + one divided F-skill. That’s a total of only 16 skills, but 10 of those skills (weapon sets) share a “cooldown” system.

4b. Because of the initiative system, the Thief has already had to trade power for the ability to “spam” skills. Thus being able to use skills from both “weakened” weapon sets at will should not cause much of a problem.

5. There’s really no reason the Thief should not be able to use its single initiative bar however he or she so desires. That requires the ability to switch weapons at will. The only “fair” alternative is to give it a separate initiative pool for each weapon set just like every other profession has.

But the bottom line is that other professions including the Elementalist and Engineer can sustain more and do more damage than the Thief.

Eliminating the weapon swap cooldown for the Thief will not increase its damage ouput, but it will add sustain. On the other hand, giving a second initiative pool would increase sustain as well as sustained damage output. Neither one, however, would cause the Thief to become overpowered compared to other professions.