The Improvisation trait is just broken!

The Improvisation trait is just broken!

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Posted by: Oraith.1732

Oraith.1732

Was playing around with some builds on my thief today and found that the Improv trait (VII in Deadly Arts)

Here is the trait’s description:
“Stealing recharges all skills of one type (venom,signets,traps,tricks, or deceptions). Deal 10% more damage when wielding a bundle.”

The problem lies within the first part of the trait, “Stealing recharges all skills of one type”. It either doesn’t recharge any skills, recharges all skills of a certain type or recharge 1 skill. I tested this multiple times, I put a trick, a trap, and a deception skill in my utilities, and stole 5 times. 4 of the times it didn’t recharge any skills, while on one of the tries it recharge my deception skill. Then on another occasion I filled my ulilities with all venoms (including basi venom) and it recharged all of them when I stole. I mean the way the tooltip explains it’s supposed to recharge all skills of one type, not recharge nothing, something, or everything. :p

The Improvisation trait is just broken!

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Posted by: ensoriki.5789

ensoriki.5789

Umm no read the description
All skills of ONE Type
The type is Trick, Deception, Signet, Trap, Venom.
So it chooses a type. If the type it chooses is Trick than all tricks you have are recharged.

The great forum duppy.

The Improvisation trait is just broken!

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Posted by: Oraith.1732

Oraith.1732

Umm no read the description
All skills of ONE Type
The type is Trick, Deception, Signet, Trap, Venom.
So it chooses a type. If the type it chooses is Trick than all tricks you have are recharged.

Yes I know that’s what it’s supposed to do(I even repeated the description). But it doesn’t do that. If it did do that everytime you steal it would at least recharge something but most the time it doesn’t recharge anything

The Improvisation trait is just broken!

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Posted by: HatSimulator.9362

HatSimulator.9362

did you test it with the elite balsk venom to see if it recharged that? test that out and see if steal just does venoms more often or something

Gates of Madness [DUI]
Main Warrior | Every other class at 80
I only play WvW

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Posted by: Adrian Umbra.9105

Adrian Umbra.9105

So ensoriki, how do you pick? That seems to be the big question to me on this. I’d agree that the way Oraith went about this was haphazard, random, and probably does not showcase this trait to its full potential, but there does seem to be a lot of ambiguity in how the trait presents itself.

Ex: If I have a signet, a trap, a trick, and an elite venom, what should be recharged when I steal? The elite? The longest recharge? The first skill in the bar? Random? Whichever one is on CD? It kind of makes it difficult to deal with these things consistently if we have no clue.

The Improvisation trait is just broken!

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Posted by: Oraith.1732

Oraith.1732

So ensoriki, how do you pick? That seems to be the big question to me on this. I’d agree that the way Oraith went about this was haphazard, random, and probably does not showcase this trait to its full potential, but there does seem to be a lot of ambiguity in how the trait presents itself.

Ex: If I have a signet, a trap, a trick, and an elite venom, what should be recharged when I steal? The elite? The longest recharge? The first skill in the bar? Random? Whichever one is on CD? It kind of makes it difficult to deal with these things consistently if we have no clue.

Yeah I did do it a bit random cause there’s nothing to go on :/
What I was wanting to use this trait for was a condi build. Like I could use caltrops on an area, steal, then use caltrops again.

The Improvisation trait is just broken!

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Posted by: Travlane.5948

Travlane.5948

Umm no read the description
All skills of ONE Type
The type is Trick, Deception, Signet, Trap, Venom.
So it chooses a type. If the type it chooses is Trick than all tricks you have are recharged.

umm no RE read his explanation of what happened…. he chose 3 types out of the 4. he used steal 5x and only once it managed to rechared one of the 3 picked. this happeneds to me alot. 9 out of 10 times at certain stretches.

The Improvisation trait is just broken!

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Posted by: Softspoken.2410

Softspoken.2410

As far as I know, the type of skill chosen for this trait is random. I’m also almost 100% certain that improvisation can choose a skill type that you don’t currently have equipped.

If you take Signet of Malice / any Trick / any Trap / any Deception / Basilisk Venom, you can guarantee one of those skills will be refreshed. Otherwise, there’s a chance that none of your skills will be refreshed.

Umm no read the description
All skills of ONE Type
The type is Trick, Deception, Signet, Trap, Venom.
So it chooses a type. If the type it chooses is Trick than all tricks you have are recharged.

umm no RE read his explanation of what happened…. he chose 3 types out of the 4. he used steal 5x and only once it managed to rechared one of the 3 picked. this happeneds to me alot. 9 out of 10 times at certain stretches.

This isn’t Star Trek. There are five types.

Mixing insults with your post is like pooping in a salad.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.

The Improvisation trait is just broken!

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Posted by: ensoriki.5789

ensoriki.5789

Umm no read the description
All skills of ONE Type
The type is Trick, Deception, Signet, Trap, Venom.
So it chooses a type. If the type it chooses is Trick than all tricks you have are recharged.

umm no RE read his explanation of what happened…. he chose 3 types out of the 4. he used steal 5x and only once it managed to rechared one of the 3 picked. this happeneds to me alot. 9 out of 10 times at certain stretches.

Refills all of one type, there are more than 3 types
The proc is random.
RNG.

The great forum duppy.

(edited by ensoriki.5789)

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Posted by: Oraith.1732

Oraith.1732

As far as I know, the type of skill chosen for this trait is random. I’m also almost 100% certain that improvisation can choose a skill type that you don’t currently have equipped.

If you take Signet of Malice / any Trick / any Trap / any Deception / Basilisk Venom, you can guarantee one of those skills will be refreshed. Otherwise, there’s a chance that none of your skills will be refreshed.

Umm no read the description
All skills of ONE Type
The type is Trick, Deception, Signet, Trap, Venom.
So it chooses a type. If the type it chooses is Trick than all tricks you have are recharged.

umm no RE read his explanation of what happened…. he chose 3 types out of the 4. he used steal 5x and only once it managed to rechared one of the 3 picked. this happeneds to me alot. 9 out of 10 times at certain stretches.

This isn’t Star Trek. There are five types.

Ok so after some testing I can confirm that this is how it works. I put signet of malice, a signet, trap, deception, and venom in my utilities and used steal while my skills were on cooldown 5 times. 4 times out of 5 it recharged at least one skill. But on the last try it didn’t recharge any because I didn’t have a trick. So overall you’re kinda’ gambling the recharges with this trait. They should make it so it recharges a skill of a certain type that’s within your utility bar.

The Improvisation trait is just broken!

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Posted by: Softspoken.2410

Softspoken.2410

Personally I’d like it if the trait just always recharged one utility on your bar. Which one of the three chosen would be at random, so if you have unused utilites, it might fizzle by just refreshing the one that’s already ready. But if you use all three of your utilities, steal with improvise is guaranteed to give something back.

If you restrict the trait to always picking a type that’s on your bar, the trait can easily be abused to get a full compliment of skills back immediately after using them, which just seems too strong.

Mixing insults with your post is like pooping in a salad.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.

The Improvisation trait is just broken!

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Posted by: Adrian Umbra.9105

Adrian Umbra.9105

Personally I’d like it if the trait just always recharged one utility on your bar. Which one of the three chosen would be at random, so if you have unused utilites, it might fizzle by just refreshing the one that’s already ready. But if you use all three of your utilities, steal with improvise is guaranteed to give something back.

If you restrict the trait to always picking a type that’s on your bar, the trait can easily be abused to get a full compliment of skills back immediately after using them, which just seems too strong.

But with how random and weak the skill is right now, it’s pretty much unusable. Thanks, but I’ll take “possibly abusable” (likely balanced by recharge of steal) double use of a highly restricted utility set over nothing. There’s a lot wrong with the skill right now even outside the unusably nasty RNG factor, but simply fixing the RNG up might be enough to bring the trait into viability.

(edited by Adrian Umbra.9105)

The Improvisation trait is just broken!

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Posted by: Softspoken.2410

Softspoken.2410

Personally I’d like it if the trait just always recharged one utility on your bar. Which one of the three chosen would be at random, so if you have unused utilites, it might fizzle by just refreshing the one that’s already ready. But if you use all three of your utilities, steal with improvise is guaranteed to give something back.

If you restrict the trait to always picking a type that’s on your bar, the trait can easily be abused to get a full compliment of skills back immediately after using them, which just seems too strong.

But with how random and weak the skill is right now, it’s pretty much unusable. Thanks, but I’ll take “possibly abusable” (likely balanced by recharge of steal) double use of a highly restricted utility set over nothing.

If you turn something into ‘possibly abuseable’ then a week later it’s ‘thoroughly abused’ and a month after that it turns into ‘removed from game’.

Mixing insults with your post is like pooping in a salad.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.

The Improvisation trait is just broken!

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Posted by: Doggie.3184

Doggie.3184

It’s a badly designed trait and fixing it would be rather difficult because the idea is just bad in general.
It’d make more sense to make it recharge a random utility on your bar, but it could still fail by recharging something that isn’t on CD. You could blow all your CD and then use it to avoid that, but it’s still kind of a lame idea. If it only recharged something that was on cooldown you could guarantee what you want recharged and it’d be like mesmer’s Echo in GW1. As nice as that would be I doubt Anet wants us to be able to do that.

You couldn’t make it recharge by type on utility bar when people could put nothing but trick on them and they always get 3 skills back

It’s not a very easy thing to balance and gambling RNG in battle isn’t very fun anyways in any aspect. Better off scrapping it for something else, imo.

| Fort Aspenwood (NA): Sylvari Daredevil Thief Main: All Classes 80. |
Please Remove/Fix Thief Trait: “Last Refuge.”
“Hard to Catch” is a Horrible and Useless Trait. Fixed 6/23/15. Praise Dwayna.

(edited by Doggie.3184)

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Posted by: dakotahkid.2685

dakotahkid.2685

This is actually a great trait to run in WvW because it increases the damage output of arrow carts and other siege equipment.

Dakota Shadowstrike
CoE

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Posted by: Doggie.3184

Doggie.3184

This is actually a great trait to run in WvW because it increases the damage output of arrow carts and other siege equipment.

Really? I didn’t know those counted as bundles. Guess it makes sense.

| Fort Aspenwood (NA): Sylvari Daredevil Thief Main: All Classes 80. |
Please Remove/Fix Thief Trait: “Last Refuge.”
“Hard to Catch” is a Horrible and Useless Trait. Fixed 6/23/15. Praise Dwayna.

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Posted by: Adrian Umbra.9105

Adrian Umbra.9105

Personally I’d like it if the trait just always recharged one utility on your bar. Which one of the three chosen would be at random, so if you have unused utilites, it might fizzle by just refreshing the one that’s already ready. But if you use all three of your utilities, steal with improvise is guaranteed to give something back.

If you restrict the trait to always picking a type that’s on your bar, the trait can easily be abused to get a full compliment of skills back immediately after using them, which just seems too strong.

But with how random and weak the skill is right now, it’s pretty much unusable. Thanks, but I’ll take “possibly abusable” (likely balanced by recharge of steal) double use of a highly restricted utility set over nothing.

If you turn something into ‘possibly abuseable’ then a week later it’s ‘thoroughly abused’ and a month after that it turns into ‘removed from game’.

Alright. Let’s fix this trait up to its maximum abusability status and have at it. This trait now recharges the maximum number of skills possible that have a kind in common. If you have 2 of two different kinds of skills (4 in total) on cooldown, the trait will recharge the maximum number of seconds worth of skills. Cooldown will be restricted to steal’s cooldown (if steal fizzles, no recharge), this can be an area of balance if need be.

Your challenge (and one for everyone else in this thread): make the most broken skill bar that you can out of this for PvE, WvW, or tPvP. Have at it. Most abusable case you can think of. I personally think that it wouldn’t be that bad, maybe used in niche builds (signets?), but go ahead and prove me wrong.

This is actually a great trait to run in WvW because it increases the damage output of arrow carts and other siege equipment.

Ooh, didn’t think of that, actually. Good point to make.

The Improvisation trait is just broken!

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Posted by: Softspoken.2410

Softspoken.2410

Double venom burst build. 30/0/10/0/30. Venomous Strength, Improvisation, Residual Venoms, Cloaked in Shadow, Thrill of the Crime, Bountiful Theft, Sleight of Hand.

Weapon sets could be D/D & SB, but I’m indecisive on that just now. Stats would be Berserker for the Brave. Bar would include HiS, Spider / Skale / Ice Drake, Basilisk

Probably best in WvW, but could possibly see use in PvP as a way to quickly kill a single target.

Strategy is:
Pre-load all venoms. Close distance to target (HS without hitting, infiltrator’s arrow maybe) use C&D → BS, then an auto chain for conditions / venom uses and HS a bit (once or twice?) as desired.
Continue combat as normal. If your enemy manages to cleanse off the conditions you’ve applied, and especially if they start booning up, steal + C&D, then reapply your venoms and backstab them again. You’re now sitting at 17 stacks of might, fury, vigor, swiftness, 2 boons from your enemy (if applicable) and your enemy should be floundering under intense condition pressure (chill, poison, torment, some weakness, a little vulnerability) and a lot of damage, while also being periodically stunned for 5 of the last 10 seconds.

You could also run a variation of this for more group-oriented play using Venomous Aura, but that’s more related to Venomous Aura and group coordination than improvisation, I think.

Mixing insults with your post is like pooping in a salad.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.

The Improvisation trait is just broken!

in Thief

Posted by: Adrian Umbra.9105

Adrian Umbra.9105

Double venom burst build. 30/0/10/0/30. Venomous Strength, Improvisation, Residual Venoms, Cloaked in Shadow, Thrill of the Crime, Bountiful Theft, Sleight of Hand.

Weapon sets could be D/D & SB, but I’m indecisive on that just now. Stats would be Berserker for the Brave. Bar would include HiS, Spider / Skale / Ice Drake, Basilisk

Probably best in WvW, but could possibly see use in PvP as a way to quickly kill a single target.

Strategy is:
Pre-load all venoms. Close distance to target (HS without hitting, infiltrator’s arrow maybe) use C&D -> BS, then an auto chain for conditions / venom uses and HS a bit (once or twice?) as desired.
Continue combat as normal. If your enemy manages to cleanse off the conditions you’ve applied, and especially if they start booning up, steal + C&D, then reapply your venoms and backstab them again. You’re now sitting at 17 stacks of might, fury, vigor, swiftness, 2 boons from your enemy (if applicable) and your enemy should be floundering under intense condition pressure (chill, poison, torment, some weakness, a little vulnerability) and a lot of damage, while also being periodically stunned for 5 of the last 10 seconds.

You could also run a variation of this for more group-oriented play using Venomous Aura, but that’s more related to Venomous Aura and group coordination than improvisation, I think.

Alrighty. First question: Do you have enough time to apply these venoms while stealthed by CnD? Second: How do we prevent this? Because with a lucky proc, (1/5 chance) a thief specced out with the exact build you described could easily pull this off. Your suggestion that it recharge utility skills only could limit abuse, but you’d still get a similar situation with 3 venoms instead of 5 or another similarly bad situation. It’s still a step though. Any other suggestions (build or solutions)?

The Improvisation trait is just broken!

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Posted by: Travlane.5948

Travlane.5948

As far as I know, the type of skill chosen for this trait is random. I’m also almost 100% certain that improvisation can choose a skill type that you don’t currently have equipped.

If you take Signet of Malice / any Trick / any Trap / any Deception / Basilisk Venom, you can guarantee one of those skills will be refreshed. Otherwise, there’s a chance that none of your skills will be refreshed.

Umm no read the description
All skills of ONE Type
The type is Trick, Deception, Signet, Trap, Venom.
So it chooses a type. If the type it chooses is Trick than all tricks you have are recharged.

umm no RE read his explanation of what happened…. he chose 3 types out of the 4. he used steal 5x and only once it managed to rechared one of the 3 picked. this happeneds to me alot. 9 out of 10 times at certain stretches.

This isn’t Star Trek. There are five types.

Ok so after some testing I can confirm that this is how it works. I put signet of malice, a signet, trap, deception, and venom in my utilities and used steal while my skills were on cooldown 5 times. 4 times out of 5 it recharged at least one skill. But on the last try it didn’t recharge any because I didn’t have a trick. So overall you’re kinda’ gambling the recharges with this trait. They should make it so it recharges a skill of a certain type that’s within your utility bar.

i agree but you should have atleast 2 types equipped for it to be valid. or max imize it to 2 total skills. so if u have 4 signets it would only recharge 2

The Improvisation trait is just broken!

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Posted by: Softspoken.2410

Softspoken.2410

Double venom burst build. 30/0/10/0/30. Venomous Strength, Improvisation, Residual Venoms, Cloaked in Shadow, Thrill of the Crime, Bountiful Theft, Sleight of Hand.

Weapon sets could be D/D & SB, but I’m indecisive on that just now. Stats would be Berserker for the Brave. Bar would include HiS, Spider / Skale / Ice Drake, Basilisk

Probably best in WvW, but could possibly see use in PvP as a way to quickly kill a single target.

Strategy is:
Pre-load all venoms. Close distance to target (HS without hitting, infiltrator’s arrow maybe) use C&D -> BS, then an auto chain for conditions / venom uses and HS a bit (once or twice?) as desired.
Continue combat as normal. If your enemy manages to cleanse off the conditions you’ve applied, and especially if they start booning up, steal + C&D, then reapply your venoms and backstab them again. You’re now sitting at 17 stacks of might, fury, vigor, swiftness, 2 boons from your enemy (if applicable) and your enemy should be floundering under intense condition pressure (chill, poison, torment, some weakness, a little vulnerability) and a lot of damage, while also being periodically stunned for 5 of the last 10 seconds.

You could also run a variation of this for more group-oriented play using Venomous Aura, but that’s more related to Venomous Aura and group coordination than improvisation, I think.

Alrighty. First question: Do you have enough time to apply these venoms while stealthed by CnD? Second: How do we prevent this? Because with a lucky proc, (1/5 chance) a thief specced out with the exact build you described could easily pull this off. Your suggestion that it recharge utility skills only could limit abuse, but you’d still get a similar situation with 3 venoms instead of 5 or another similarly bad situation. It’s still a step though. Any other suggestions (build or solutions)?

Given that it takes exactly 1s to apply all venoms (Basilisk venom has a 1s casting time, all others are instant and can easily be used while basilisk is being prepared) the stealth from C&D is more for the surprise element of your enemy not necessarily knowing you’re going to blast them with a full regiment of venoms again.
The 1/5 is the prevention. Running this with an 80% chance of the strategy coming to a grinding halt is enough of a discourager to prevent this from being considered seriously. As well, my suggestion was such that one of the utilities refreshes at random, not one category on your utility bar. In this case, you’d get either spider, skale, or ice drake venom, but only one of them.

Mixing insults with your post is like pooping in a salad.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.

(edited by Softspoken.2410)

The Improvisation trait is just broken!

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Posted by: Adrian Umbra.9105

Adrian Umbra.9105

Double venom burst build. 30/0/10/0/30. Venomous Strength, Improvisation, Residual Venoms, Cloaked in Shadow, Thrill of the Crime, Bountiful Theft, Sleight of Hand.

Weapon sets could be D/D & SB, but I’m indecisive on that just now. Stats would be Berserker for the Brave. Bar would include HiS, Spider / Skale / Ice Drake, Basilisk

Probably best in WvW, but could possibly see use in PvP as a way to quickly kill a single target.

Strategy is:
Pre-load all venoms. Close distance to target (HS without hitting, infiltrator’s arrow maybe) use C&D -> BS, then an auto chain for conditions / venom uses and HS a bit (once or twice?) as desired.
Continue combat as normal. If your enemy manages to cleanse off the conditions you’ve applied, and especially if they start booning up, steal + C&D, then reapply your venoms and backstab them again. You’re now sitting at 17 stacks of might, fury, vigor, swiftness, 2 boons from your enemy (if applicable) and your enemy should be floundering under intense condition pressure (chill, poison, torment, some weakness, a little vulnerability) and a lot of damage, while also being periodically stunned for 5 of the last 10 seconds.

You could also run a variation of this for more group-oriented play using Venomous Aura, but that’s more related to Venomous Aura and group coordination than improvisation, I think.

Alrighty. First question: Do you have enough time to apply these venoms while stealthed by CnD? Second: How do we prevent this? Because with a lucky proc, (1/5 chance) a thief specced out with the exact build you described could easily pull this off. Your suggestion that it recharge utility skills only could limit abuse, but you’d still get a similar situation with 3 venoms instead of 5 or another similarly bad situation. It’s still a step though. Any other suggestions (build or solutions)?

Given that it takes exactly 1s to apply all venoms (Basilisk venom has a 1s casting time, all others are instant and can easily be used while basilisk is being prepared. The stealth from C&D is more for the surprise element of your enemy not necessarily knowing you’re going to blast them with a full regiment of venoms again.
The 1/5 is the prevention. Running this with an 80% chance of the strategy coming to a grinding halt is enough of a discourager to prevent this from being considered seriously. As well, my suggestion was such that one of the utilities refreshes at random, not one category on your utility bar. In this case, you’d get either spider, skale, or ice drake venom, but only one of them.

In which case, (IMO) the trait really just wouldn’t be worth it. I’d rather have some of the adept traits rather than rely on one of my utility skills randomly recharging. Maybe it’s just me being dumb or narrow minded, but it just seems weak to get a 45 second cooldown refresh of a random utility skill (maybe not random if you play it right, but still…).