Guild Wars 2

They nerfed opportunist yet upped the base initiative regeneration in hopes that “more builds” could be made. They weren’t trying to buff us, just flush us out with more options. The one thing that made them fall short however was that once you take into account the pros and cons of initiative regen with the soon-to-be opportunist, you’ll see that our initiative will seem barely untouched. I think they were just trying to make it so that there will actually be some thief builds that don’t focus in the Critical tree. They essentially just gave us more flexibility but tried to throw the word "buff: into the equation which isn’t what it is, more like a spread. Which means that the upcoming update for us is primarily nerfs again :/

eh critical strikes is still mandatory imo with good traits such as executioner and hidden killer.

i see what they’re trying to do, but it’s not a buff.

But they forgot that thieves have different weapons and uses for initiative.

Its not a significant buff or debuff if a player was already using Opportunist. The math seems to indicate that Opportunist will work as well as it did before. Players who don’t trait Opportunist will see a noticeable improvement in overall initiative regen though.

No, the math says it will NOT work as good as it currently does. Godangit, where is all this “the math says it’s fine!” coming from when I haven’t seen a single graph, formula, or even detailed synopsis of it actually being equivalent?

well i guess thgey want us to kill ppl with auto attacks while having even less survivability….

Straegen.2938:

Its not a significant buff or debuff if a player was already using Opportunist. The math seems to indicate that Opportunist will work as well as it did before.

Have you read this?

JonPeters.5630:

By reducing this trait and improving base regen we are giving non-crit thieves 15-30 trait points back to spend where they want to.

JonPeters.5630:

TLDR; Thieves with 15+ in critical strikes and no other initiative traits will be slightly less efficient. All other thieves will be equally or more efficient.

Jon

This is why words are better than math. The math don’t lie, the mathematician on the other hand…

By reducing this trait and improving base regen we are giving non-crit thieves 15-30 trait points back to spend where they want to.

There is nothing else to take for a damage thief. Even more so if this patch hits live.

Critical strikes is still mandatory. 30% crit chance, 30% crit damage alone can not be passed on.

Now add onto that executioner or hidden killer…..

CS tree still mandatory for non-condi thieves.

Kincaidia.3192:

No, the math says it will NOT work as good as it currently does. Godangit, where is all this “the math says it’s fine!” coming from when I haven’t seen a single graph, formula, or even detailed synopsis of it actually being equivalent?

Here is a graph of the probability of gaining initiative for 4 seconds of dagger autoattack. This change isn’t so much a nerf as a move to even out the gain of initiative while capping the current potential (which is a nerf in itself). It is not a massive buff and I tend to think it’s a minor nerf to aggressive playstyles and minor buff to relaxed playstyles which don’t keep up as much pressure. I am much more concerned about the nerf to vigorous recovery which was about a 66% uptime on the right build. Feline grace by itself is slightly worse than 100% vigor uptime. Those classes that have 100% vigor uptime also have access to ample amounts of protection, regen, and stability. I thought the point of combining FG with Vigor was to make up for the lack of our other defensive boons.

Edit: Four seconds was chosen as a baseline to round 2 rounds of dagger auto attack to which also coincides with 3 initiative regen on the current system and 4 on the proposed.

Edit 2: For 2 attacks and under, it a minor buff. Additional math is in the opportunist thread, but I don’t feel like posting more of the same info everywhere.

I don’t run any points in Crit, still kick kitten in tPvP.

Straegen.2938:

Its not a significant buff or debuff if a player was already using Opportunist. The math seems to indicate that Opportunist will work as well as it did before. Players who don’t trait Opportunist will see a noticeable improvement in overall initiative regen though.

It depends really on what weapon set you’re using. Sets that use rapid attacks such as Unload or Pistol Whip usually have high initiative costs. Opportunist alleviates some of the stress of this. I could easily gain at least 2 initiative back on every unload I do however if my target evades or for some reason I don’t land it, it really leaves a big hole in my initiative supply. I haven’t done any testing on this but I’m sure I can get just about 2 unloads off in 5 seconds which would cut my regular initiative regeneration down to a fraction of what it used to be. The increase in base regeneration will not make up for this.

Excalibur.9748:

Critical strikes is still mandatory. 30% crit chance, 30% crit damage alone can not be passed on.

Now add onto that executioner or hidden killer…..

CS tree still mandatory for non-condi thieves.

Agreed. As useful as Opportunist was, there’s still too much other reasons to be forced to sink 30 points into critical strikes. This change will not give us any more variability than we already have.

Since I don’t run any condi builds the only build I’m somewhat excited about that will benefit from the opportunist change is my venom share build as I don’t have the trait points to allow for crit strikes. Other than that…

Honestly, the entire design of crit chance/crit damage hinders rather than helps the overall design of GW2.

In other systems, critical hit chances are a bubble stat, good as an extra DPS dump the same way vit/toughness work hand in hand to be defensive dumps without being completely and utterly “take this much of this one or you are just plain wasting the one you took”

Our critical strikes line, and the general necessity to dump in to 3 offensives because its just plain better than dumping in to defensive, support and condi stats isn’t ever going to be “fixed” without a gamewide overhaul of the way critical chance and damage are calculated to bring them in line value-wise with taking other stats.

Prec/crit damage simply cost too much because you must take both if you’re taking either. No other stat is this dependant. I’ll use condi damage/duration. Both valuable stats for their purpose, but also both fully useful stats without the other. Precision is largely a useless stat without also investing in a nearly equal amount of crit damage and vice versa.

The fact that we have a trait line that grants both at once is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because we can get a lot of damage out of a lower trait investment, but it’s a curse because what comes out of that line is these two siamese twin stats, and thus it’s wholly stupid to NOT take it if you want to do what passes for “good” damage in this game.

That’s the problem really. Not a minor hit to init regen for specs that already outperformed other specs by a massive margin and will continue to do so.

A start would be rebalancing all “on crit” gear and effects in the game to be “on hit” procs and adjusting their chances to reflect this. Critting is its own reward, is already above and beyond in damage, and there’s no reason to further reinforce it as a necessary build choice by making it a necessary catalyst for virtually every proc in the game.

Switch.4892:

Excalibur.9748:

Critical strikes is still mandatory. 30% crit chance, 30% crit damage alone can not be passed on.

Now add onto that executioner or hidden killer…..

CS tree still mandatory for non-condi thieves.

Agreed. As useful as Opportunist was, there’s still too much other reasons to be forced to sink 30 points into critical strikes. This change will not give us any more variability than we already have.

I can see why you guys think that way, Jon explained it poorly. What I think he was saying is that, those whose build doesn’t directly benefits from CS puts 15 points into CS just to supplement their initiatives regen by picking up Opportunist. So those builds that spends a lot of initiative are forced to put 15 pts into CS even though they are not crit build. And because they have already put 15pts into CS, they might as well go 30 pts into CS — thus pigeon holing a lot of players into building CS.

Improving the init-regen and making Opportunist less attractive, they are hoping that those who are not crit build will not feel obligated to have 15pts into CS.

Their goal is give back 15-30 pts that those builds can put somewhere else — unfortunately, Jon and his team have not specified where exactly can we put those points other than back into 15pts in CS. :/

I can see their intention, but I think they have the wrong solution. Instead of making Opportunist less attractive, perhaps making other traits more attractive and useful instead. The only reason why people are pigeon holed into CS15 is because there’s really no other better alternatives.