Guild Wars 2

With the recent change to initiative regen, I feel like some builds are out of control.

Back in the days, you either pick the condi cleanse on stealth or the blind on stealth. You couldn’t have the best of both worlds since you always needed Infusion of Shadow for the initiative regen. Well…you could but you couldn’t chain CnD as much. Regarding trickery builds, thief having 15 base intiative and the new regen is a bit too much. You really don’t have to manage your initiative pool as much.

Of course you will still run out of initiative if you spam like a kitten but it is so much more forgiving now than before. What do you guys think?

I think that was the point of the change, and it’s still quite easy to avoid. Initiative is in a good place right now, in my opinion. But then, I never used the extra 2 initiative every 10 seconds trait or quick pockets, so I can’t speak to every aspect of it.

I think the real problem with the ini buff was that it ended up highlighting how broken some mechanics are: i.e. Pistol Whip

I think the ‘out of control’ builds should be addressed independantly of the ini change.

The ini change gave thieves a boost in PvE DPS, which is good since their support is so weak.

The ini change also helped D/D specs that rely on the blind on stealth to keep from falling too far behind D/P.

Trickery-based thieves still need to put points in Trickery. I know this seems like an obvious point, but builds are about choices, and Trickery has pretty limited options for offense/defense when compared to other places you could spec.

The worst thing about the init regen change was that it made several init-gain options obsolete. Infiltrator’s Signet is still OK because of the stunbreaker and shadowstep, but Patience is useless, Signet Use is sketchy, and Opportunist is a shadow of its former self. The slottable traits are the worst ones here, because at least with Opportunist it’s only an auto-minor.

Builds that are out of control (are there any? I haven’t seen one) can just be changed via some other lever. Init should probably be left alone.

Put me right if I’m wrong but somebody did the maths of old ini+traits vs new ini+traits and it came out that we actually have lower rate of overall recharge.

^ You’re right that several people laid out fantasy-scenarios of init regain that nobody would ever see in a realistic situation, but I’m not aware of anyone who actually did it out in practice.

There is a theoretical drop in the maximum possible ini regain when you are Pistol-whipping a hundred guys in a wind tunnel with atomic-clock precision, but generally most builds saw a buff to their overall real-world regen.

i think the the initiative nerf was fair.
but they broke the sword weapon set when they added the cast time to IS/IR.

the thief is a squishy class forced to fight toe to toe for the most part.
IS/IR needs to be a reliable skill to avoid mass stun.
even if they cut the return distance or something else to make it a balanced skill

but the initiative change did make some traits useless

scabrous.7835:

Put me right if I’m wrong but somebody did the maths of old ini+traits vs new ini+traits and it came out that we actually have lower rate of overall recharge.

They calculated for opportunist being a constant, when in reality you’re not always attacking. Certainly in PvP, time spent evading or in stealth is time in which you’d gain more initiative from the increased regeneration rate and gain no benefit from opportunist.

Impact.2780:

scabrous.7835:

Put me right if I’m wrong but somebody did the maths of old ini+traits vs new ini+traits and it came out that we actually have lower rate of overall recharge.

They calculated for opportunist being a constant, when in reality you’re not always attacking. Certainly in PvP, time spent evading or in stealth is time in which you’d gain more initiative from the increased regeneration rate and gain no benefit from opportunist.

I did the math that way true enough. However, for me since I play just PvE I in fact could and still do attack almost constantly using Signet of Malice for healing. My “disengaging” typically consisted of backing off and spamming Unload. Seriously though,net of the nerf’s Anet’s “massive” buff came to about 3-5 extra initiative per minute. I had to stay traited the same as before to receive any real buff to initiative. The only thing I notice is it is slightly easier now to run D/D since I can C&D maybe once (at most twice) more per minute.

Dahkeus.8243:

I think the real problem with the ini buff was that it ended up highlighting how broken some mechanics are: i.e. Pistol Whip

I don’t understand why people think that Pistol Whip is broken. Sure I can use it one extra time with the new init system, but the damage is still horrible. Yeah, you can AoE. Yeah, you can heal burst by hitting multiple targets. However, it has no means to finish anyone off. I often swap to a dagger main hand only because Heartseeker do a better job at finishing what I’ve started.

As a sustain damager, Pistol Whip is king, but that doesn’t make it broken because you still need to swap to a weapon set with a burst damage as a finisher.

scabrous.7835:

Put me right if I’m wrong but somebody did the maths of old ini+traits vs new ini+traits and it came out that we actually have lower rate of overall recharge.

Old: 7.5 (base) + 2 (Quick Recovery) + 1 (Infil Signet) = 10.5ini/10sec
New: 10ini/10sec (base)

Renny.6571:

scabrous.7835:

Put me right if I’m wrong but somebody did the maths of old ini+traits vs new ini+traits and it came out that we actually have lower rate of overall recharge.

Old: 7.5 (base) + 2 (Quick Recovery) + 1 (Infil Signet) = 10.5ini/10sec
New: 10ini/10sec (base)

This how you should look at it.

Old: At .75init/sec, it takes 16s to fill a 12 init bar, 20s for a 15 init bar.
New: At 1init/sec, it takes 12s to fill 12 init bar, 15s to fill 15 init bar.

At the 15 init bar level, that is a 33% boost as they’ve promised.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

This how you should look at it.

Old: At .75init/sec, it takes 16s to fill a 12 init bar, 20s for a 15 init bar.
New: At 1init/sec, it takes 12s to fill 12 init bar, 15s to fill 15 init bar.

At the 15 init bar level, that is a 33% boost as they’ve promised.

Yeah. The point of my post was to highlight that initiative regen is a lot faster than it was pre-patch, even without any traits or utilities.

Renny.6571:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

This how you should look at it.

Old: At .75init/sec, it takes 16s to fill a 12 init bar, 20s for a 15 init bar.
New: At 1init/sec, it takes 12s to fill 12 init bar, 15s to fill 15 init bar.

At the 15 init bar level, that is a 33% boost as they’ve promised.

Yeah. The point of my post was to highlight that initiative regen is a lot faster than it was pre-patch, even without any traits or utilities.

Um, you could’ve just compare the base rate like “1init/s > .75init/s” if that’s your point, thus my reply. :/