Guild Wars 2

Not sure if this was covered in another thread, from reading the proposed changes as well as responses from Jon, how are they justifying the comparison between initiative regen vs cooldown times?

Thief skills are all tied to a shared resource that when its empty that means we have no access to any attacks, while every other class have cool downs that can refresh simultaneously or independently.

I guess they think of it at this way

a necro uses all his skills, ends up all on cd and spams his 1

thieves use all their skills, have no initiative and ends up spamming his 1.

the difference is that thieves get to pick what skill to use multiple times that result in 0 initiative (that kinda has the same effect as having all skills on cd)

its like, imagine a necro being with a staff, and instead of casting 2,3,4,5 skills after witch all of his skills go on cd and not avaiable, imagine him being able to cast 5,5,5,5 after witch the 2,3,4,and 5 skills go on a same cooldown .

as for them comparing the buff they made on our base ini with the “lowering the cd on all weapons from other classes by 25%” its cause with faster ini regen, you get to spend less time with “not enough initiation” before you get to use another heart seeker.

just as with regular cooldown reduction on staffs, you get to wait less before you get to use your mark of blood.

so yeah, its almost the same thing, except thieves get to pick what skill they want to use multiple times over another skill that’s available for them.

When a thief swaps weapons when ini is zero ot still means ini is zero, while any other class swaps weapons they have full skill availability on seperate set

Yeah they should just fix heartseeker animation so when you hit the button it doesn’t react until the animation finishes… would probably end up with 5 heartseekers in 8s instead of 6s but then there would be NO thief burst.

Vukorep.3081:

…snip…

its like, imagine a necro being with a staff, and instead of casting 2,3,4,5 skills after witch all of his skills go on cd and not avaiable, imagine him being able to cast 5,5,5,5 after witch the 2,3,4,and 5 skills go on a same cooldown .

…snip…

A necro, after casting 2,3,4,5 can then swap weapons and cast 2,3,4,5…

A thief can cast the equivalent of 12 init (untraited) and then is on cool down on all skills.

As soon as a Necro casts a skill, it begins regenerating whether he casts any other skill or not, casting 3 after 2, does not decrease the recharge rate of 2. It does for a thief because all his skill use the same 12 init resource.

A necro, running on an initiative system could, at best cast 5, 5 and be completely blown on both land and underwater weapon sets. That means he used 2 skills to put 18 others on CD.

It’s a bit like comparing apples to oranges. The initiative system has advantages as does the alternative, but they are a bit too different, imo, for ANET to use the 25% analogy as a justification for claiming a massive buff to a class that is once again being nerf hammered.

edited: fixed for tired

With weapon swap, I rarely have a character that doesn’t have something (other than autattack) up by the time I run through the full cycle.

With Thief, it’s like you’re getting about 1/2 as many attacks (autoattack aside) as other classes.

I may just be tired how would thief casting another ability which uses initiative cause him to recharge the first skill faster?

BlaqueFyre.5678:

I may just be tired how would thief casting another ability which uses initiative cause him to recharge the first skill faster?

You’re not tired, I am. I should’ve said decrease…

Pixels.6532:

BlaqueFyre.5678:

I may just be tired how would thief casting another ability which uses initiative cause him to recharge the first skill faster?

You’re not tired, I am. I should’ve said decrease…

Haha it happens to the best of us but, was thinking I missed something

Thieves also have the fact that using any defencive/movement/ultility skills in their weapon slots directly and negatively affect their dps output.

eg. Although i could spam blackpowder for almost forever, i’d be unable to use any other weapon skill. Something other classes dont have to contend with.

But i agree with the apples to oranges statement. There is noway you can compare thief’s initiative to that of other classes. The only way to compare is to compare the class as a whole and i’m pretty sure everyone agrees thiefs are under powered.

I am glad there are other people that notice this other than me. This most certainly frustrates me when i’m trying to chase a kitten GS warrior, and his CD’s are all reduced, and they are all basically all ready to go after they finish their chain “’get a way combo” I only have enough initiative for 3 infiltrator arrows, then I’m out of ini. The ini regen buff is well needed.

AikijinX.6258:

The ini regen buff is well needed.

What buff? Its going to be a nerf if left as is to any high crit build that uses opportunist.

I much prefer having an initiative pool than cooldowns. Sure, you have to be careful with your resource management, but it’s a small price to pay in order to have any of your moves ready at all times for any situation that gets thrown at you.

Thieves are pretty much the Jackie Chan of GW2.

MyCondolences.8172:

AikijinX.6258:

The ini regen buff is well needed.

What buff? Its going to be a nerf if left as is to any high crit build that uses opportunist.

I’m talking in terms of the base ini regen buff.

AikijinX.6258:

MyCondolences.8172:

AikijinX.6258:

The ini regen buff is well needed.

What buff? Its going to be a nerf if left as is to any high crit build that uses opportunist.

I’m talking in terms of the base ini regen buff.

Well i can say one benefit of this would be that crit becomes less important as a whole for thieves. ATM been stacking crit just for the sake of opportunist.
More Crit = More Initiative = More Casts of PW = More Immune+Procs of Healing Signet always as DPS

I used to think the Initiative system made Thieves simpler and somehow…easier to play.

After all, a lot of the time you can just spam your most effective move. Is Death Blossom your signature move? Then spam it ALL the time…

I also never felt like we made significant trade-offs for over-extending on your Initiative. Until I played D/P I never really felt like Initiative limited me in any way.

But then I actually spent significant time playing other classes, classes with cooldowns and recognized just how much dumber and shallower they are. It really is just about using all your skills, switching weapons…using all those skills….switching back again.

At least a Thief switches weapons based on his situation. Most other classes will switch weapons just to get to use skills. I never realized just how stupid this system of short CDs with little/no resource management is.

Yes, a Thief would be easier to balance if he had cooldowns. But the game-play of all classes would be better if they had to actively manage real resources instead of just spaming their skills in CD.

Yes but my question again is, how do they expect us to swallow the comaprison between our initiative resource vs the cooldowns of other classes they can be on full cd and get all skills back at once and use all of them, thieves do not have that convenience. So how can they justify saying

JonPeters.5630:

Let’s break down this thief change a bit more so we can dispel any notions that this is going to ruin thieves.

We are increasing base regen by 33%. This is basically equivalent to a patch notes that says: “Warrior: Cooldown on all weapon skills has been reduced by 25%.”

well that is the worst thing they could do. Proving to a thief community that they have no clue about how the thieves work.
We get 1 more initiative per 4 seconds. We get 1 more 4-ini skill per 16 seconds. Technically, the we get cooldown time reduced by 25% on ONE skill.
Other classes get 15%/20%/35%/40% cooldown time reduced on 2/3/4/8/11 skills.
How a thief one is superior in any way I fail to notice.

It’s not. For JonPeters to try to sell it that way, in multiple topics in multiple forums shows a ridiculous failure of understanding.

Or someone on the team knows it and there was a discussion along the lines of “How can we nerf the frack out of thieves but paint it like we’re improving them”?

Dee Jay.2460:

I used to think the Initiative system made Thieves simpler and somehow…easier to play.

After all, a lot of the time you can just spam your most effective move. Is Death Blossom your signature move? Then spam it ALL the time…

I also never felt like we made significant trade-offs for over-extending on your Initiative. Until I played D/P I never really felt like Initiative limited me in any way.

But then I actually spent significant time playing other classes, classes with cooldowns and recognized just how much dumber and shallower they are. It really is just about using all your skills, switching weapons…using all those skills….switching back again.

At least a Thief switches weapons based on his situation. Most other classes will switch weapons just to get to use skills. I never realized just how stupid this system of short CDs with little/no resource management is.

Yes, a Thief would be easier to balance if he had cooldowns. But the game-play of all classes would be better if they had to actively manage real resources instead of just spaming their skills in CD.

This right here, I have played Guardian, Mesmer, and WWarrior, and thief is by far my favorite, since it is a challenge, but the blatant disregard that other classes have twice as many skills available to them to use, compared to thieves makes me laugh and saddened at the same time. Looks like I might dust off Mesmer if they ever truly plan on fixing thieves, as well as actually balancing Guards and Wars.

If they’re going to make everything and it’s mother a flipping chain skill they might as well go to a cooldown system. Inb4 Infiltrator’s arrow is a chain skill where you blind on the shot and warp later.
Yes bitter.

A thief can chain the better attacks in a weapon set quickly. Every other class has to contend with a cooldown on XYZ weapon skill. For example, dropping 4-5 cluster bomb blast finishers is something no other class can do.

Is it worth the trade-off, that is subjective but I would say yes. Certainly more fun to play.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Yes but my question again is, how do they expect us to swallow the comaprison between our initiative resource vs the cooldowns of other classes they can be on full cd and get all skills back at once and use all of them, thieves do not have that convenience. So how can they justify saying

JonPeters.5630:

Let’s break down this thief change a bit more so we can dispel any notions that this is going to ruin thieves.

We are increasing base regen by 33%. This is basically equivalent to a patch notes that says: “Warrior: Cooldown on all weapon skills has been reduced by 25%.”

Imagine that our Initiatives bar starts at zero and fills up over time. For instance you are using D/D and every time that init-bar goes to 3-init, Heartseeker becomes available to use, in other words, it’s out of cooldown, but we want to use CnD instead, so we conserve that init and wait — effectively placing HS on a cooldown.

The wait time to get from zero to 6-init defines the cooldown rate for CnD.

However at 6-init we have 2 choices, we can either CnD or use HS twice. When our target drops to 25% health, it is more profitable to use HS twice — other profession have no access to this kind of choice, they are stuck with using the skill then wait for cooldown.

Can you imagine a Warrior doing 100-blades twice in a row? This is the kind of advantage that Initiative gives us Thieves.

Unfortunately, Initiatives places CnD in an indefinite cooldown as long as we are spending initiatives as soon as it becomes available. If I keep using HS as soon as I get 3-init, then CnD will never get off cooldown. Warriors on the other hand, they have the Adrenaline system that allows them to build up resources that allows them to deal a massive amount of damage without sacrifices.

Imagine if the warrior has to build up adrenaline to use their skills, they will be the loudest among the whiners. Because every time they use their axe skill, they will put Eviscerate in an indefinite cooldown. If the Warrior choose to bank the adrenaline just as we choose to bank init to get to CnD, they too will be doing kitteny damage and they will QQ until the end of time.

If ANET looks at the initiatives from this perspective, they will gain the understanding on how initiatives works. Comparing it to a profession with 2 resources is not a fair comparison.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Yes but my question again is, how do they expect us to swallow the comaprison between our initiative resource vs the cooldowns of other classes they can be on full cd and get all skills back at once and use all of them, thieves do not have that convenience. So how can they justify saying

JonPeters.5630:

Let’s break down this thief change a bit more so we can dispel any notions that this is going to ruin thieves.

We are increasing base regen by 33%. This is basically equivalent to a patch notes that says: “Warrior: Cooldown on all weapon skills has been reduced by 25%.”

Imagine that our Initiatives bar starts at zero and fills up over time. For instance you are using D/D and every time that init-bar goes to 3-init, Heartseeker becomes available to use, in other words, it’s out of cooldown, but we want to use CnD instead, so we conserve that init and wait — effectively placing HS on a cooldown.

The wait time to get from zero to 6-init defines the cooldown rate for CnD.

However at 6-init we have 2 choices, we can either CnD or use HS twice. When our target drops to 25% health, it is more profitable to use HS twice — other profession have no access to this kind of choice, they are stuck with using the skill then wait for cooldown.

Can you imagine a Warrior doing 100-blades twice in a row? This is the kind of advantage that Initiative gives us Thieves.

Unfortunately, Initiatives places CnD in an indefinite cooldown as long as we are spending initiatives as soon as it becomes available. If I keep using HS as soon as I get 3-init, then CnD will never get off cooldown. Warriors on the other hand, they have the Adrenaline system that allows them to build up resources that allows them to deal a massive amount of damage without sacrifices.

Imagine if the warrior has to build up adrenaline to use their skills, they will be the loudest among the whiners. Because every time they use their axe skill, they will put Eviscerate in an indefinite cooldown. If the Warrior choose to bank the adrenaline just as we choose to bank init to get to CnD, they too will be doing kitteny damage and they will QQ until the end of time.

If ANET looks at the initiatives from this perspective, they will gain the understanding on how initiatives works. Comparing it to a profession with 2 resources is not a fair comparison.

This is true to an extent, but it doesn’t take into account that on weapon swap other classes have full abilities while thieves do not we are still tied to the same initiative we had before swapping.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Imagine that our Initiatives bar starts at zero and fills up over time. For instance you are using D/D and every time that init-bar goes to 3-init, Heartseeker becomes available to use, in other words, it’s out of cooldown, but we want to use CnD instead, so we conserve that init and wait — effectively placing HS on a cooldown.

The wait time to get from zero to 6-init defines the cooldown rate for CnD.

However at 6-init we have 2 choices, we can either CnD or use HS twice. When our target drops to 25% health, it is more profitable to use HS twice — other profession have no access to this kind of choice, they are stuck with using the skill then wait for cooldown.

Can you imagine a Warrior doing 100-blades twice in a row? This is the kind of advantage that Initiative gives us Thieves.

Unfortunately, Initiatives places CnD in an indefinite cooldown as long as we are spending initiatives as soon as it becomes available. If I keep using HS as soon as I get 3-init, then CnD will never get off cooldown. Warriors on the other hand, they have the Adrenaline system that allows them to build up resources that allows them to deal a massive amount of damage without sacrifices.

Imagine if the warrior has to build up adrenaline to use their skills, they will be the loudest among the whiners. Because every time they use their axe skill, they will put Eviscerate in an indefinite cooldown. If the Warrior choose to bank the adrenaline just as we choose to bank init to get to CnD, they too will be doing kitteny damage and they will QQ until the end of time.

If ANET looks at the initiatives from this perspective, they will gain the understanding on how initiatives works. Comparing it to a profession with 2 resources is not a fair comparison.

This is true to an extent, but it doesn’t take into account that on weapon swap other classes have full abilities while thieves do not we are still tied to the same initiative we had before swapping.

Weapon swapping is beyond the scope of your original post and my post is in response on comparing Init and CDs — so I obviously did not cover the effect of weapon swapping.

Besides, what exactly is the problem with weapon swapping in terms of init-regen? Sure a new set of skills are available but it doesn’t change the fact that the previous weapon skills are still in cooldown for non-init users. The availability of the second set doesn’t necessarily means that they received a cooldown reduction, in fact, the profession is stuck in the set after swapping while the weapon swap is in cooldown. Also skills on the first set with cooldown less than 10s now received a 10s cooldown after the swap. Every profession deals with this limitation.

Only warriors has the ability to manipulate the weapon swap rate, but even though they can swap sooner, doesn’t necessarily mean that the skills will be out of cooldown. Most of their skills have cooldowns longer than 10s.

If we compare Axe #2 (6s CD) to Dagger #2 (3init), for instance, at the rate of 1-init/sec (proposed Dec. change), we get to use our #2 skill more often than the warrior even if they choose to swap weapons back and forth. Swapping in this case will actually not going to be favorable to the warrior since most of our #2 skills only costs us 3-init.

The only edge that the warrior has is their adrenaline skill that deals a lot of damage the longer they remain in a fight.

When you swap to another weapon set after blowing your cos on first set you have a whole new set of cos to blow whiles thieves do not we waste our initiative supply we swap weapons we still have no iniative.
Plus it doesn’t reset skills on cd when you weapon swap you have to wait to swap again is all

BlaqueFyre.5678:

When you swap to another weapon set after blowing your cos on first set you have a whole new set of cos to blow whiles thieves do not we waste our initiative supply we swap weapons we still have no iniative.
Plus it doesn’t reset skills on cd when you weapon swap you have to wait to swap again is all

I’ve already cover that in my last post. If a warrior choose to blow all their cooldowns on both weapon sets, they will be waiting for a long time to blow them all again. Some of their skills even goes upto 20s cooldown — that’s 20 initiatives we gain in that time frame under the proposed Dec. change. They have to trait to reduce their cooldown while we will get it naturally.

So I don’t see the problem with weapon swapping compare to the proposed change to initiative. The problem I have is while we lose effectiveness the longer the fight becomes, warrior builds up a secondary resources for a massive damage skill without sacrifices.

Sorry miss read a part of your post, you are right.

You are forgetting to compare the other parts.
Like how long it would take a thief to do a damage that would be equal to a warrior blowing his all cooldowns in a row.
Believe me, that time is much greater than the cooldown on the warrior’s skills.

Ichishi.9613:

You are forgetting to compare the other parts.
Like how long it would take a thief to do a damage that would be equal to a warrior blowing his all cooldowns in a row.
Believe me, that time is much greater than the cooldown on the warrior’s skills.

Damage is not the discussion here because there are many factors we need to consider to define what damage really means. If you want to discuss damage against an inanimate object, then yes, you’re right, but that’s hardly representative on what actually happens in a fight. Conditions, buffs, evasions, dodges, positioning, to name a few, plays a large part when talking about damage.

If you want to discuss this topic, make a new thread and post the numbers that made you believe that the “time is much greater than the cooldown on the warrior’s skills.”

And what is the point of comparing how many skills warrior and thief can use in a given time frame if we do not consider the usefulness of those skills?

Ichishi.9613:

And what is the point of comparing how many skills warrior and thief can use in a given time frame if we do not consider the usefulness of those skills?

“Usefulness” is highly subjective and very situational. In order that we can make a comparison, we need to look at both weapon sets (warrior’s and thief’s) objectively — otherwise we’ll be going out of our mind discussing the cause and effects, chain of events, plays and counter-plays, and the endless possible scenarios.

So the point that we are trying to accomplish in this topic is not how useful or effective a skill is, rather when do they become available to the given profession — what they do with that skill is really up to them and there’s really no way to anticipate on how they will spend their cooldowns or initiatives.

If a skill doesn’t have timed activation cost, it blows right through a stun. The reason we see most times on thief skills is because they want them to be effected by stuns. Most of the longer duration skills are because they have multiple attacks or parts that use the duration to balance the different parts of the attack.

Straegen.2938:

If a skill doesn’t have timed activation cost, it blows right through a stun. The reason we see most times on thief skills is because they want them to be effected by stuns. Most of the longer duration skills are because they have multiple attacks or parts that use the duration to balance the different parts of the attack.

The big problem with that is that a locked down thief in the current state is a dead thief. Another glaring problem is that they nerfed our evasion but gave us nothing in return. Oh wait, not exactly nothing; they buffed a rather lackluster trait into a shinier version of irrelevance and another one that increases our chances of getting killed.

Also should account that instead of having cd reduction traits for your weapons you have traits that grant bonus initiative under certain circumstances. So depending on how those traits are chosen and play out you could hypothetically refresh your attacks faster than you could if you had actual cooldowns.

I feel this is a great asset to thieves but also a curse. When other classes blow their powerful skills we know they are now on cd and can’t be used against us for a while. When I thief blows a powerful skill they could, if initiative allows, turn around and immediately use it again, making for much harder to predict what they will do. That is where the hypothetical situation ends. Most people can tell what the thief will do next because their skills generally have better effects if used in very predictable patterns. IE, HS+HS will lead to easier and more damage due to the decreasing health than if for some reason you decided to use your dual skill after HS.

Just to summarize: Initiative is nice in theory for adding to your unpredictability but in practice it is usually just enabling thieves to use the same skill over and over instead of using a mix of others due to the general straight-forwardness of their skills.

Yes the only issue I find wwith the initiative system vs cooldowns, is if you blow all your c d’s you can switch weapons and have a whole new set to use, if a thief blows all his initial he can’t instantaneously get a whole other set of attacks and utilities, yes depending on how thieves are trained they can get a significant amount of initial back, however with the new patch that is gone and capped out , weakening the thief class even more especially with more of their utility weapon skill getting nerfed.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Yes the only issue I find wwith the initiative system vs cooldowns, is if you blow all your c d’s you can switch weapons and have a whole new set to use, if a thief blows all his initial he can’t instantaneously get a whole other set of attacks and utilities

Then after that first swap, half of their skills are locked out for upto 15-20s while in that same time frame we would have a bar full of initiatives plus half bar more. The balance here is that, they get a full set of skill to blow at the first swap, but we get to reuse our skills sooner that they do. With 1-init/sec, it would only take 12s to get full init-bar, 15s if traited.

Why do you still insist on your weak argument?

yes depending on how thieves are trained they can get a significant amount of initial back, however with the new patch that is gone and capped out , weakening the thief class even more especially with more of their utility weapon skill getting nerfed.

Suit yourself, but you’re not convincing anyone with that statement, you’re just making noises for no apparent reason. Your concerns have already been proven to be baseless.

If we assume that all skills have 30 sec cooldown (and most of them have lower cd) you still can blow 8 skills every 30 seconds on cooldown class.
In the same 30 seconds thief would regenerate 30 initiative. That is 10 heartseekers. Or 7.5 DB. Or 6 unloads/pistol whips. Or 5 CnD’s. Notice, you can only spam heartseekers more than other classes can use skills in this case. Oh wait, now add cooldown reduction to cooldown skills.
And try again.

Ichishi.9613:

If we assume that all skills have 30 sec cooldown (and most of them have lower cd) you still can blow 8 skills every 30 seconds on cooldown class.
In the same 30 seconds thief would regenerate 30 initiative. That is 10 heartseekers. Or 7.5 DB. Or 6 unloads/pistol whips. Or 5 CnD’s. Notice, you can only spam heartseekers more than other classes can use skills in this case. Oh wait, now add cooldown reduction to cooldown skills.
And try again.

That’s hypothetical and not even close to representative on what actually happens in a fight.

You do realize that if a profession blow all 8 skills with 30s cooldown that all they’d be doing for 30s is auto-attack, right? How long do you think it will take for another profession to take them out? I know my Thief can take them out before they can get their cooldowns back because my Thief will have a nice flow of initiatives that allows me to keep the pressure until they break. All it takes is 10-12 initiatives to pull a nice combo.

lol @ spamming 10 HS for 30s.

I am just trying to point out that one skill in 4-5 seconds is NOT > 8 skills in 30 seconds

And I’m creating an argument to learn from the far more knowledgeable people here on the thief class, so if I’m wrong I will let it be.

Yes thief skills can regen faster than most c d’s but other classes and swap weapons and have access to 8 skills to use against us while we are tied to four at any given time then have to wait for a minimum of three seconds to be able to use the cheapest ini cost skill

BlaqueFyre.5678:

And I’m creating an argument to learn my self for one far mor knowledgeable people here than me on thief class, so if I’m wrong I will let it be.

Yes thief skills can regen faster than most c d’s but other classes and swap weapons and have access to 8 skills to use against us while we are tied to four at any given time then have to wait for a minimum of three seconds to be able to use the cheapest ini cost skill

The risk is higher against the cooldown skill because if that skill missed, dodged, or evaded, that skill is in for a longer cooldown. Thieves on the other hand can recover quickly from a missed, dodged, or evaded skill due to the improved init-regen. This is why I said that with the new change, it will allow us to keep the pressure. If they block one of our skills, their block skill is locked out, while we can try again in a few seconds.

The change removes the requirement that we have to proc Opportunist to get initiatives back, this is a big step in the right direction especially against a target with Retaliation.

I agree on the fact that the init-regen is not fast enough (I believe that it has to scale based on the missing Initiative), but Jon admits that it needs to be tested so that they can get a more solid set of data. I believe that’s fair enough.

Imagine a situation:
You are surrounded by deadly aoe, standing on an only safe spot.
As a thief, you just used your damage skill, that left you with 0 initiative.
As a warrior, you just used your damage skill, and it went on cooldown.
Suddenly, an enemy appears charging melee skill that seems to be very painful attack.
Now what can a (not godly insightful superskill) thief do?
1) wait 4-5 seconds for initiative to recharge to use blind/cc. You’ll die before.
2) dodge. and die in aoe.
3) dodge and dodge back. you might have regened 4 initiative to blind next one-shot. MAYBE. and you can’t dodge anymore
4) dodge out and use an ability to port yourself back. No guarantee that you will actually avoid damage this way. Or that you will be ported right back on safe spot.
5) use an op utility. Wait, what? Theoretically you can use: Smoke wall, signet of shadows, shadowstep(if you are lucky with terrain). Sure as hell you won’t be carrying smoke wall for this. Just as well you would not consider wasting a stun breaker if you are not sure it will surely save you. Well, SoS is still an option. If you waste a slot for running it in combat.

Now, what can a warrior do?
1) Use one of 7 other skills. That, unlike thief skills, may include block or some other invulnerability, reliable CC or just enough damage to finish threat off right away.
2) If for some reason 1) was not favored, there is 3 utility slots where warrior can have anything ranging from CC to invulnerability.
3) forget it. I have 2x base hp and 1.5-2x base armor. I’ll take it like a man.

Increasing base init regen is, IMO the best way to deal with the problem. Having init return on hit traits is just poor thief design. Init is not combo points, and shouldn’t reinforce being played as such. Making sure we have enough initiative to compete with CDR traits from other classes here, no matter our spec, is the issue here.

When you’re bemoaning less possible init, keep in mind that you’re operating on the symptom of a problem. Certain builds being effectively required to take every init gain in the book just to function is the problem. For something as fundamental as initiative, it shouldn’t just plain suck out of the box. Just like steal shouldn’t just plain suck out of the box.

As thieves, our core mechanics have been laughable for a long time, but managable as they are propped up by a handful of good traits. The further we get away from having to utilize traits just so our main mechanics function at an acceptable level, and the closer we get to picking traits because they add something meaningful on top of those mechanics, the better.

That’s how the core traits for other class mechanics work, and IMO it’s good that we are getting more init, and here’s hoping we’ll see a slight overall buff to steal in the future as well.

“As a thief, you just used your damage skill, that left you with 0 initiative.
As a warrior, you just used your damage skill, and it went on cooldown.”

You still deal in the totally unrealistic. So both used one skill, and warrior has all other weapon skills ready, but thief has zero initiative? Sounds totally legit and equal. And what if the warrior used up all weapon skills and thief has 10 initiative ready? What about the weapon skills at slot 4-5 which have 25-40(!) sec CD? Imagine a situation where a blind could save your life and you used up your blind skill with 25 sec CD. Imagine a situation where your skill with a 25 sec CD missed. And so on…

Initiative is 100x more fun than spamming the weapon skills one after another to cooldown. What Dee Jay wrote around the beginning of the topic. You just have to manage it. You don’t spam skills to burn your initiative to zero (more so because you get 10% dmg above 6).

Ichishi.9613:

Now what can a (not godly insightful superskill) thief do?
1) wait 4-5 seconds for initiative to recharge to use blind. You’ll die before.
2) dodge. and die in aoe.
3) dodge and dodge back. you might have regened 4 initiative to blind next one-shot. MAYBE. and you can’t dodge anymore
4) dodge out and use an ability to port yourself back. No guarantee that you will actually avoid damage this way. Or that you will be ported right back on safe spot.
5) use an op utility. Wait, what? Theoretically you can use: Smoke wall, signet of shadows, shadowstep(if you are lucky with terrain). Sure as hell you won’t be carrying smoke wall for this. Just as well you would not consider wasting a stun breaker if you are not sure it will surely save you. Well, SoS is still an option. If you waste a slot for running it in combat.

None of the above.

This is a poor scenario to favor the warrior. What if I say that you are standing on an island surrounded by boiling lava and your only way out is to jump to the main island? In this scenario, you are the warrior and your friend is an Engineer. You try to jump, but it’s too far you died. The Engineer uses their rifle skill to jump over. Do you see now why your scenario is not representative?

Besides, I can get out of that AoE field in one piece myself. Your approaching enemy just gave me the way out. If you don’t know how — then you’re not a thief. Hint: Kleptomaniac grants 3 init.

Now, what can a warrior do?
1) Use one of 7 other skills. That, unlike thief skills, may include block or some other invulnerability, reliable CC or just enough damage to finish threat off right away.
2) If for some reason 1) was not favored, there is 3 utility slots where warrior can have anything ranging from CC to invulnerability.
3) forget it. I have 2x base hp and 1.5-2x base armor. I’ll take it like a man.

Funny how the Thief has no utility skill but the Warrior has. lol.

Nice try, but this only proves that you have no idea how the comparison works.

No.
The base idea for whole initiative idea is that you can have low initiative regeneration when you don’t need it (outside combat) and more initiative regeneration when you need it and willing to do something for it (like when actively attacking).
Base initiative regen works 100% of time. Out of all that time I spend around 10-15% of time actually using initiative.
Initiative from other sources (namely opportunist) works only when you are far more likely to need it, eg during attacking.
We get a 33% buff to initiative use 15-20% of time.
And 60-50% nerfs to initiative we gain only when we need it.

Yeah the reason I left out scenarios as examples was it can be setup in whoever favor you want, my only issue is with we are tied to 4 skills at any given time outside of ini regen which is negated while using the utility skills and mobility thieves have, but even our utilities are lack luster in every aspect besides mobility, kiting and waiting for ini regen is fine in my book I play S/D so I have gotten used to waiting it out to be able to attack.

Other classes can use their 2 weapon sets to constantly apply pressure more effectively in a burst scenario, then use there invulnerability and mobility utilities until they are off cd,

both methods have favorable conditions and this feedback has been helping me see all these aspects.

So what I have gathered especially with the new patch is thieves are being forced to play more tactically than any other classes especially with how they are reworking traits and skills.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Yeah the reason I left out scenarios as examples was it can be setup in whoever favor you want, my only issue is with we are tied to 4 skills at any given time outside of ini regen which is negated while using the utility skills and mobility thieves have, but even our utilities are lack luster in every aspect besides mobility, kiting and waiting for ini regen is fine in my book I play S/D so I have gotten used to waiting it out to be able to attack.

I agree.

Other classes can use their 2 weapon sets to constantly apply pressure more effectively in a burst scenario, then use there invulnerability and mobility utilities until they are off cd,

Not entirely true. Because of long cooldown, they have to be wise on using their skills. Most of the time, they have skills that simply sits there, off cooldown, not being used because it would be wasteful to do so. So they wait for the right moment. Even if they have access to 8 skills, you will only see 3-4 of those skills are being used most of the time and the ones with long cooldowns are used only when the probability of a direct hit is secured — i.e. when target is disabled.

both methods have favorable conditions and this feedback has been helping me see all these aspects.

So what I have gathered especially with the new patch is thieves are being forced to play more tactically than any other classes especially with how they are reworking traits and skills.

Nobody is being forced to play a certain way, but yes, you need to be tactical to be profitable, you don’t want to waste initiative just as you don’t want to waste CDs.

I beg to differ on being forced to play a certain way, from all the recent changes and proposed changes to S/D from larcenous strike to shadow return changes, yet they allow Perma boon builds, but I agree with the rest of what you say.

However every other class does have access to 8 skills they can potentially use at the beginning of the encounter even if they don’t choose to use said skills. While thieves only have access to 4 skills and any combination of those 4 skills