Guild Wars 2

I was refraining from being too negative on the decisions made be the development team. But I just had an epiphany, and it hit me. The decisions based around the Thief design are absolutely, mind-blowingly Stupid (with a capitol “S”) and beyond any sense of comprehension if balance or viability was the intention.

Why? Here’s a list of things that make the design a mess (no continuity)…

1. From the official description of the Thief on the Guild Wars 2 site…

“Experts at stealth and surprise, thieves can move through the shadows, vanish into thin air, or steal items from their opponents and use them as weapons. Thieves practice an agile, acrobatic fighting style, which can make them very hard to hit.”

2. Thieves are primarily a MELEE profession. The available ranged weapons are weak and have limited range.

3. Thieves have the LEAST amount of health available with little effect from armor.

4. Feline Grace was gutted with the June 23rd, 2015 patch, removing a significant capacity to dodge.

5. AoE’s are large with no way to counter other than dodging/evading or avoiding altogether.

6. Passive traits from other professions not only negate a Thief’s damage, but can also do damage and/or control the Thief from its own successful attacks.

7. The only way to guarantee avoiding damage without a dodge/evasion is to not get hit (running or hiding).

8. In order to do melee damage, the Thief must be in melee range, forcing the Thief to choose whether to do damage and receive damage or to take no damage by running away.

9. The Thief has no inherent speed advantage over any other professions, making the Thief reliant on certain weapons or utilities in order to run away successfully.

10. The Thief can attempt to hide in Stealth to avoid damage.

11. The Thief can trait to heal, remove damaging conditions, and mitigate damage while in Stealth.

12. The Thief can use more powerful or useful attacks only while in Stealth.

13. Other professions can completely remove and/or prevent the Thief from being in Stealth, completely negating any and all benefits from Stealth with absolutely no way to remove that effect.

14. The Thief cannot build to be powerful enough to eliminate a competent enemy quickly or build defensively enough in order to sustain a prolonged engagement against a competent opponent.

What does that mean? It means that the original concept of the Thief got lost somewhere, or it never had a great basis to begin with.

It also means that it has been handled with incompetence. Not that it is the work of any specific individual(s), but because it has not been handled as an “exceptional” entity. It is being handled just as though it were like every other profession, though the very concept is completely unique.

What is the summary of the above list? Thieves die too easily when they actually engage with full potential. And if they do not build for full damage, they are not effective. It is not a skill issue, it is a design issue.

Here are some basic things to consider…

1. Melee fighters WILL take damage. It doesn’t take skill to hit something close to you.

2. The only way to survive damage is to absorb it or evade it. The Thief does not have enough capability to do either to survive a prolonged battle.

3. Placing an AoE on yourself guarantees a big advantage over a Thief. It will either avoid you to stay alive or it WILL take damage that it cannot afford to take.

4. Revealing a Thief removes and and all sustainability from it. If the Thief had any previous conditions or just swapped to a melee set, it is in lots of trouble.

Now, in my personal opinion, as much as the Thief is reliant on Stealth (forced to do so by the development team), the core concept seems to have been based on acrobatics and agility. What does agility mean in this game? Dodges and evades. And not simply dodges and evades, but the ability to perform them fluidly and on demand. Does the Thief (or even the Daredevil) have this? No.

Check out this video from Ninja Gaiden. That is what truly opened my eyes to the flaws of the Thief design. Notice what is happening in that game. Anyone who has played it knows how fragile your character is. It only takes one slip to ruin your day. It is a VERY difficult game. And at first, you think the developers were absolute sadists. But after you play for a while, and after many, MANY failures, you learn something important…

Yes, your character is extremely fragile, but you have been given the tools and abilities to succeed!!!

The developers did not want you to die over and over and over. They wanted you to improve and get better. Because when you win, you have truly accomplished something. It was not a matter of luck or chance, it was pure skill. Just as in that video, the player became so skilled, he did not take any damage whatsoever.

Now, I understand that Guild Wars 2 is a multiplayer game. But the concepts remain. Victory or failure should be based on skill, not on lack of capability.

Imagine Ninja Gaiden if you only had 2/3 dodges and no blocking/countering ability. Imagine that game if you took damage every time you successfully struck the enemy. Would anyone be able to survive even the first level?

What am I saying? Simply that the Thief profession needs to be handled differently than any other profession. First of all, we need to get a clear understanding of what the Thief is. Is is an acrobatic fighter? If so, give it some special acrobatic capabilities (baseline). Is it really supposed to be hard to hit? Then give it lots of (fluid) dodges/evades (baseline). And for goodness sake, make it immune to passive defenses like Mirror of Anguish, Reaper’s Protection, or Retaliation.

Having a fragile profession is fine. Just as long as you give it (baseline) the tools and abilities to actually succeed. And I do mean in actual combat, not simply running away and capping points. Stop making it so difficult or even impossible to avoid damage. How can a Thief who relies on active defense defend against passive damage? It’s absolutely stupid!

If you want to treat other professions as special and balance them uniquely also, that’s great. I’m not against that. But the essence of the Thief is lost. And personally, I think it can be found somewhere in a game like Ninja Gaiden.

I understand that Thief was OP back in the day when it could perma-invis or outright kill people in 3 seconds. That’s no fun and I’m glad we’ve moved away from it. Like you said Kageseigi, the long term solution is to increase the survivability by giving the core profession additional thief-y sustain abilities.

We’re very much in a weird place right now. We’re useful in all game modes while also being a hindrance in those modes lol. In sPvP a good thief can turn the tide of the game, we do this kind of by avoiding combat though. By back-capping and +1ing when allies need help. We’re almost like roaming offensive support to people 1v1’ing.

We definitely aren’t cannon-ey enough to be consistent glass cannons – which is fine, but then we should have some form of sustain added with stealth being made less prevalent in the near future.

While we were changed a bit, i don’t think our position is where it is because we got nerfed per se. Since launch we took some heavy hits. I think the major contributor to our low standing comes from the fact that we actually were barely touched with recent patches. The other professions have evolved and their meta game has changed while ours has practically stayed the same. Actually, it has decreased with the acrobatic change. This gave other’s more options to defeat us and it is to the point where having a 1 v 1 in sPvP requires so much effort on the part of the thief that makes you wonder why even try?

I’m glad you linked that description because I also remember something similar to it that said that thieves excelled at 1 v 1’s and were the master duelist class. Well that went out the window didn’kitten As for our base health, I don’t have a complaint there since we share our HP with guardians and elementalists, it’s just that they have far more active/passive defenses than we do.

When the daredevil was revealed, I was excited about it. Now the last elite spec was revealed and it seems like the thief got the crust of the pizza. All we get essentially, is another evade…that’s it. Necromancers becomes powerhouses, rangers become celestial beings, warriors go into their final form..etc. Other elite specializations make those classes seem powerful. I don’t feel powerful with daredevil at all. Yeah we have more condi clear, which I am expecting them to nerf, and cool new evades, that were broken at first. I don’t know. I’ve been around for a very long while and I’ve never considered re-rolling but I won’t say the revenant will not get quite a few hours of gameplay from me.

If the last three years have proven anything, it’s that balancing a class around never getting hit doesn’t work for a PvP-focused game. Even when that design is executed well, it’s extremely frustrating for your enemies to deal with; no one likes the feeling of being completely unable to hit the opponent.

This leads to there being realistic limits to how much can be evaded (as there should be), which is fine except when you have an entire class still balanced around not getting hit. Sooner or later that class will run out of dodges and tricks, and then they just die. Simply put, Thief needs to be balanced around the reality of sometimes getting hit.

Right now, it isn’t… and that’s a big problem for the people playing Thief.

I am under the impression that the original team knew what they were doing and that all of it got lost on the way – I think thief how it has been (when I started, can’t talk about anything prior, so 1,5-2 years ago) had mostly smart stuff but the june patch destroyed what was left of it. And it will be further destroyed with all the reveal stuff cause someone at anet got backstabbed once.

And yeah, I agree with amante, I’m still running valk zerker on my main and played against a warrior the other day – I didn’t make one single mistake, dodged all 2-5 attacks, evaded with death blossom, still I had no chance cause the cleave alone killed me.
That was a better warrior, btw, I can kill other warriors with 3 hits. And I might have had a chance if I had gone full glass, cause SA is just too weak. But you never know who’s around the corner in wvw.

Thank you! You just sad everything I’ve been thinking about.

I played thief only since launch on and off. Now I’ve come back for the longest time since launch. 1 month. I figured I get into PvP for real this time. Taking my time to learn I’ve made improvements but when I play with my friends I notice they can do so much more in so many situations (they play other classes) that I get shocked thinking they are super skilled! Like “holy kitten, really nice work man you won that duel or you managed to stand tall for so long??”. Cause these things are just impossible to do for me as a thief.
I started to realize especially after looking at daredevil how its gonna be. Thief lost its way. Stealth arent protecting me good enough, when I’m not in stealth I die too fast. Biggest problem tho are AoE’s hard to avoid in a 3v4 fight, trying to sneak up and get a backstab in usually result in me getting to my target with half health gone even before I managed to land a BS.

And when I land BS i almost do no dmg. I’ve been trying so power necro, boy do I get stuff done there! But my BS on full glass canon does about 5 K if I get the crit going, with necro I just pop two wells and do the same dmg or I can just pop lich critting 7 K each auto.
That’s interesting cause the thief’s BS require a lot of set up while other classes only have to press a button.
Like this: [Black Powder] + [Heartseeker] + ACTUALLY GETTING BEHIND THE TARGET + BS HAVE TO CRIT = success

Meanwhile the necro: press 5 (lich), auto attack = Boom you do all those steps by just letting it auto and do even more dmg. Or you could just put out your two wells and do more than that damage to multiple targets.

So after trying necro, a total noob at it I got so much more power, control, sustain even after just playing it for 1 hour. Thief I have been playing for 3 years. That tells me how unrewarding it is to play thief. All that set up that a Back stab requires and how exposed you are after considering you have to speck full damage makes the damage out put far from enough!..

And daredevil is like a WoW or Diablo 3 Monk. Not that stealthy sneaky class that I singed on to play so I wont even try it. I choose thief because its a stealth class but not anymore it seems.

Honestly, the problem with evasion is that, like stealth, people are more likely to complain “I can’t hit random buttons and deal damage”

It doesn’t matter that it takes a bit more skill to actively evade than facetank with protection and much better EHP, the perception from both the developer and the player base ends up being the same: You got wrecked by an overpowered class in stead of a better player.

See, when you get wrecked by a better… let’s say warrior. You felt like you had a chance, even if you didn’t. You probably dealt damage to that guy, you probably watched his HP bar drop at least a bit. Even if you were massively outclassed in terms of player ability you felt like you had a chance because you saw some of your tools being effectively applied.

The problem with stealth, and evasion for that matter, is when you get beat you feel like everything you did was pointless. You’re either swinging at air or seeing a string of “evade evade evade” and players find that frustrating.

When developers test content in a live environment, they are players, and a lack of objectivity leads to the same result. They believe the class is more powerful that it actually is.

However, when you take a look at the people that have the best understanding of the game’s mechanics and their practical applications, your top tier PvP teams (and going forward your most effective or efficient raiders for the PvE end) you get a completely different story. Thieves have a niche use that isn’t even a thief niche after HoT, and beyond that every other class can fulfill their role better in combat, and thieves boil down to shortbow 5 decap bots.

It’s that story they should be balancing around. That level of play has bled out all but the most effective strategies as a result of the competitive environment.

We need to start by increasing theif durability, but it can’t be through more stealth and evasion simply because our stealth and evasion based defenses are what led to where we are now

These tools create a perception, no matter how incorrect, that we are more powerful than we are because our ability to dictate the terms of engagement allows us to bend these tools to our advantage and display a facade of invincibility when we know we can actually pull it off.

More armor, life on hit, passive healing, toughness, or base HP is not the most fun or skillful way to increase our sustain, but it’s the way most likely to stick and not be nerfed in to oblivion next time designers rotate.

PopeUrban.2578:

See, when you get wrecked by a better… let’s say warrior. You felt like you had a chance, even if you didn’t. You probably dealt damage to that guy, you probably watched his HP bar drop at least a bit. Even if you were massively outclassed in terms of player ability you felt like you had a chance because you saw some of your tools being effectively applied.

The problem with stealth, and evasion for that matter, is when you get beat you feel like everything you did was pointless. You’re either swinging at air or seeing a string of “evade evade evade” and players find that frustrating.

When developers test content in a live environment, they are players, and a lack of objectivity leads to the same result. They believe the class is more powerful that it actually is.

Your whole post really hit the nail on the head. This is why it’s important to have developers that actually play a class like Thief. Otherwise, they end up balancing it around the same erroneous assumptions and emotional reactions that players have. When the developers have their own experience related back to them by the average player, it creates an echo chamber that further reinforces an already faulty design philosophy.

My single and largest issue is not the reveals or lack of health or armor or other means whereby I can mitigate damage.

In WvW it IS those AOE’s all stacked atop one another with multiple rings atop that that lock you in the AOE. There will be more of that to come wherein they do not even need a reveal when a thief stealthed to do you in they just saturate an area with that AOE.

meaning you need something like shadowstep to get away which is on a 60 second cooldown.

More durability can be had by looking at those cooldowns all designed for a very different world. Added to that the first proposed SR of 50 percent less damage while stealthed might be warranted.

+1 great post, couldn’t have said it better.

Amante.8109:

If the last three years have proven anything, it’s that balancing a class around never getting hit doesn’t work for a PvP-focused game. Even when that design is executed well, it’s extremely frustrating for your enemies to deal with; no one likes the feeling of being completely unable to hit the opponent.

This leads to there being realistic limits to how much can be evaded (as there should be), which is fine except when you have an entire class still balanced around not getting hit. Sooner or later that class will run out of dodges and tricks, and then they just die. Simply put, Thief needs to be balanced around the reality of sometimes getting hit.

Right now, it isn’t… and that’s a big problem for the people playing Thief.

Here’s the thing though. If you look at something like protection that reduces all incoming damage by 33%, you’re basically ignoring every 3rd hit. This would mean that you would have to dodge every 3rd hit to be as effective as protection. The other 2 low health tier classes have anple access to protection or rather continuous heals and blocks. Even with our high dodge rate with the old FG, that just put out evasive capabilities on par with protection. They should have stripped out the damage buffs from the line but left the defensive traits alone, requiring real choice when making builds.

So overall, I don’t agree that they can’t balance around not getting hit. Yes, it’s a little frustrating to fight against, but when it only takes 2-3 solid hits to down a thief, it’s fine.

Maugetarr.6823:

Here’s the thing though. If you look at something like protection that reduces all incoming damage by 33%, you’re basically ignoring every 3rd hit. This would mean that you would have to dodge every 3rd hit to be as effective as protection. The other 2 low health tier classes have anple access to protection or rather continuous heals and blocks. Even with our high dodge rate with the old FG, that just put out evasive capabilities on par with protection. They should have stripped out the damage buffs from the line but left the defensive traits alone, requiring real choice when making builds.

So overall, I don’t agree that they can’t balance around not getting hit. Yes, it’s a little frustrating to fight against, but when it only takes 2-3 solid hits to down a thief, it’s fine.

I’m not really sure if I’m right on this buut the 2 classes which don’t have invulnerability are necro (33% less) and thief (none – or 25% when in stealth when traited in SA).
The damage output overall got higher with the June patch, the health pool didn’t – I think mine is lower as it has been, no idea about other classes. Those who have 2 dodges and 1 or more invulnerabilities/blocks seem to survive better in this “patch”.
So, like a few already said: The overall damage should be reduced, especially for tanky classes or those who have got other ways to mitigate damage as it’s harder to hit them = to survive against them.
I don’t really oppose 3 dodges, thus a smart way to fight, just saying that even one hit right now hurts a lot.

Edit: So basically what I think is that currently all balance is off. You can buff thief all you want, but then we become another mindless class like the rest of them who can faceroll their keybord to success as they can go as glassy as they like, they still won’t get hit because of all their invulnerabilities.

Edit²: Thief needs buffs nonetheless but most other classes need nerfs.

Yeah, pretty much.

Jana.6831:

Maugetarr.6823:

Here’s the thing though. If you look at something like protection that reduces all incoming damage by 33%, you’re basically ignoring every 3rd hit. This would mean that you would have to dodge every 3rd hit to be as effective as protection. The other 2 low health tier classes have anple access to protection or rather continuous heals and blocks. Even with our high dodge rate with the old FG, that just put out evasive capabilities on par with protection. They should have stripped out the damage buffs from the line but left the defensive traits alone, requiring real choice when making builds.

So overall, I don’t agree that they can’t balance around not getting hit. Yes, it’s a little frustrating to fight against, but when it only takes 2-3 solid hits to down a thief, it’s fine.

I’m not really sure if I’m right on this buut the 2 classes which don’t have invulnerability are necro (33% less) and thief (none – or 25% when in stealth when traited in SA).
The damage output overall got higher with the June patch, the health pool didn’t – I think mine is lower as it has been, no idea about other classes. Those who have 2 dodges and 1 or more invulnerabilities/blocks seem to survive better in this “patch”.
So, like a few already said: The overall damage should be reduced, especially for tanky classes or those who have got other ways to mitigate damage as it’s harder to hit them = to survive against them.
I don’t really oppose 3 dodges, thus a smart way to fight, just saying that even one hit right now hurts a lot.

Edit: So basically what I think is that currently all balance is off. You can buff thief all you want, but then we become another mindless class like the rest of them who can faceroll their keybord to success as they can go as glassy as they like, they still won’t get hit because of all their invulnerabilities.

Edit²: Thief needs buffs nonetheless but most other classes need nerfs.

Actually, playing on my non-thief alts, the game is pretty close to balanced (in PvP). There are a few outliers like D/D ele an PU mes, but the nerfs to the burns and the duration of PU respectively should bring them more into line with the other classes. That said, we are an outlier in the opposite direction. The bell curve just needs to be narrowed.

We are the outlier because of our lack of mitigation. I don’t really support giving thieves more autoprocs or boons, but more access to endurance regen in a form that could stack with vigor would be useful. Also, part of the reason that D/P is outperforming S/D is that it has better endurance regen because of the autoattack. More endurance regen should be folded into acrobatics, so if you want to stack dodge mechanics with DrD you have to sacrifice 2 offensive lines to be an evasive machine.

Honestly we need some more denial and theft mechanics if nothing else changes. We don’t need damage buffs, we need interesting mechanical buffs to our defensive lines. The underperfoming acrobatics line is a prime candidate to introduce some new things.

A previous post of mine for changes that could be made to rework acro into something interesting that could stand on its own

Basically, my idea is to offer 3 different types of enhancement that could be taken together as a single row or mixed. These are mobility enhancement(ME), brawling enhancement (BE), and effect mitigation(EM).
Adept
Expeditious Dodger: 3 seconds of swiftness on dodge.
ME: Fleet Shadow ->Explosive Speed: Gain 3 seconds of super speed when you gain swiftness (8 sec ICD)
EM: Pain Response: Fine as is
BE: Vigorous Recovery: Gain 5 seconds of vigor on heal. When you gain vigor, lose a condition (5 sec ICD)
Master
Feline Grace: Fine as is
ME: Guarded Initiation -> Captive Transversal: When you shadowstep to a target, immobilize that target for 1.5 seconds (8 sec ICD)
EM: Hard to Catch: Fine as is
BE: Swindler’s Equilibrium: Reduce steal cooldown by 3 seconds on successful evasion. No weapon restriction (5 sec ICD)
Grandmaster
Endless Stamina: Fine as is
ME: Assassin’s Reward -> Swindler’s Transversal: When you shadowstep to your target, transfer 1 condition and steal 1 boon (8 sec ICD)
EM: Don’t Stop: Fine as is
BE: Upper Hand: Gain 3-5 endurance on hitting the opponent (1 sec ICD) (would need to be play tested to determine strength)

Reminds me of D3 monks when Dex increased dodge chance. Sure it was nice avoiding 100% of damage, but when they did hit you (and they eventually always would) it hurt like a kitten and being in melee range meant it happened a lot.

Same thing here really, our ranged dps is basically non-existent and we rely on shadow stepping in melee range to deal quick damage and either shadow step out or stealth and reposition. Even the slightest slip up or cc is extremely punishing and its only gotten worse. I could care less about any dps buff to thief at this point, and dare devil is meaningless to me since its only acrobatics 2.0. Thief needs their defensive options redesigned as well as a few of their offensive skills to be on par with the most prominent set (d/p).

Simple number values won’t fix anything, thief is in a unique problem that needs actual thought to fix, only question is how long before any effort will be made for them before people really start getting toxic towards the dev’s.

[if anet wants to design a brawler type of thief it shoud reduce the passive effects in the game to closely zero, give the thief in combat regen to make it able to survive the cleave it takes while actually doing damage, however it is still gonna be extremely weak against stealth spike damage.]

I like the evade concept anet is doing for DrD however it wont be strong enough in high MMR/competitive scene.

The problem with evasion is that it locks your character, you cannot do damage. this in mind your goal is to avoid big hitting abilitys and trade health when the enemy is unlikely to get on top. this would be doable if the eavesive weaponsets had abilityes with meaningful damage, but this is not the case(PWhip is an exception).

Even at this point you are most likely fail to hit due to the opponent has got 2evades + energy sigil+1, at least 2 types of invuln, and SHlTS blind condition or maybe has barely limited access to stealth.

Sometimes the opponent dosent even need to directly hit you with an ability, its passives and aoe fileds do the job for them, not to mention passive traits that CC you unevetably.

Even worse case is when your opponent got many instantcast abilityes (yes he is going to have becouse the more ‘against’ design abilityes you have the better).
Evading should be a mechanic that allows you to actively mitigate damage after seeing combat animations, NOT TO ENCHANCE YOUR PROPHET SKILLS to make sure for example mesmer wont hit F3, all the mantras with C S to burst you down in the upcomming stunned 1,5secs.
You dont have to be a mesmer to instantpunish somebody, just grab hydro+leeching or geom+20stacks might. ALLDONE you got your own selfmade, unavoidable bullkitten!! yay!

Builds with stalth are more likely to get on top of you. You have to use a lot of resources to avoid being gut for at least 40% hp. Becouse you know… you can’t really evade something that you dont see comming.

+1factor: you won’t be able to rez anybody unless you pick shadow arts, which is not fitting into the playstyle by any means.

So, as you see evasion oriented builds are doomed against GW2’s metagame.
Whar can be done? Not much… buffing driven fortitude for something like this wold be a good beginning:

-

Gain regeneration on successfully evading an attack. (0.1 sec ICD)
Regeneration (1sec): 600 Heal

-

this would enchance your survival in teamfights but stay closely the same in 1v1’s
(obviously you are going to evade more kitten at once in a bigger brawl so trait can proc more than once on an evade) also opening place to counterplay with boonhate.

EDIT: i dont want thief to excell in all 1v1 situations. that would be kinda kittened if thef jumps all over the map with the ports, winns all 1v1 for nodes. But evasive thief’s incompetence in any role needs solution.

Maugetarr.6823:

Here’s the thing though. If you look at something like protection that reduces all incoming damage by 33%, you’re basically ignoring every 3rd hit. This would mean that you would have to dodge every 3rd hit to be as effective as protection. The other 2 low health tier classes have anple access to protection or rather continuous heals and blocks. Even with our high dodge rate with the old FG, that just put out evasive capabilities on par with protection. They should have stripped out the damage buffs from the line but left the defensive traits alone, requiring real choice when making builds.

So overall, I don’t agree that they can’t balance around not getting hit. Yes, it’s a little frustrating to fight against, but when it only takes 2-3 solid hits to down a thief, it’s fine.

I partially agree, but in practical terms you don’t actually need to dodge even 1 out of 3 attacks to get 33% damage reduction. Eating a few 1k auto attacks but dodging the 8k burst is a net gain compared to protection.

Unholy Pillager.3791:

Maugetarr.6823:

Here’s the thing though. If you look at something like protection that reduces all incoming damage by 33%, you’re basically ignoring every 3rd hit. This would mean that you would have to dodge every 3rd hit to be as effective as protection. The other 2 low health tier classes have anple access to protection or rather continuous heals and blocks. Even with our high dodge rate with the old FG, that just put out evasive capabilities on par with protection. They should have stripped out the damage buffs from the line but left the defensive traits alone, requiring real choice when making builds.

So overall, I don’t agree that they can’t balance around not getting hit. Yes, it’s a little frustrating to fight against, but when it only takes 2-3 solid hits to down a thief, it’s fine.

I partially agree, but in practical terms you don’t actually need to dodge even 1 out of 3 attacks to get 33% damage reduction. Eating a few 1k auto attacks but dodging the 8k burst is a net gain compared to protection.

That is true, but protection allows you to shrug off the autochain from the opponent and dodge the burst. Autos alone can hit pretty kitten classes without protection or invulns. Right now you can dodge an 8k eviscerate (3.0 multiplier iirc) but if you eat the auto chain, it’s something like a 5.0 multiplier overall. Not to mention protection mitigates instant cast skill that you can only dodge through prediction. Back in it’s heyday, FG + Vigor let you dodge once every 3.5 seconds, and while that might be a little strong, getting it back down to kitten seconds would be nice since we lack most of the defensive capabilities seen by the other classes on our health tier.