Guild Wars 2

I didnt really think about this til now but why are thieves the only class in the game that has a unique design. In terms of weapons, none of its weapons have a skill cooldown, they have a currency cost, called initiative. Why is it that every other class in the game must obey a time cooldown? Not that I am upset but it seems so trivial thieves have this pretty significant difference compared to every other class in the game. Why do eles and necros not have mana? and warriors and guardians have their own type of special skill currency? Or why didnt anet just decide to make thieves obey the same time cooldown restrictment that other classes did? I think its quite cool thinking about how immensely pvp and wvw would change if every class had a currency cost on skills compared to cooldowns.

It’s kind of too late to make a change like this to an existing class, though I would love to have a low base or no cooldown on all skills for the ele and have a mana pool to play with while leaving the attunement cooldown.

Whenever they add a new class it’s something to think about, or if they feel the need to revamp a class it’s something to think about.

o.0 All classes have a unique design some more then others. While yes every other class has a cool down timer they each have a unique perks about them.

In ways warriors have slight initiative like setup with the F1 skill as well as Mesmer with there F1-F4 skills.

Cyprien.4208:

o.0 All classes have a unique design some more then others. While yes every other class has a cool down timer they each have a unique perks about them.

In ways warriors have slight initiative like setup with the F1 skill as well as Mesmer with there F1-F4 skills.

Not as unique as thief though. I kinda dont see the logic in doing this for arenanet. However I dont necessarily think they should have resorted to giving each class something like initiative aka mana/rage. They should have just done something completely unique with initiative that doesnt function as a currency and made it so thieves have skill cooldowns as well. It obviously would be a completely different thief then we know today but thats okay.

The thief was designed to be an in and out class. I was advertised to be the best dueler and it follows the philosophy of hitting quickly and hitting hard. It has initiative to do this. To compensate, a thief’s skills are not as powerful(by themselves)as other class skills. Also, their defenses aren’t that high. Other classes have higher defenses, even ele have active defenses, to compensate for their “stale-mate state” during cooldowns. Besides, every class has a unique mechanic. And if you want to get rid of a thief’s initiative, get rid of their shadowsteps and stealth too since all three intertwine heavily with the theme of the class

RedSpectrum.1975:

To compensate, a thief’s skills are not as powerful as other class skills.

I guess spammable blind, spammable teleports, spammable stun and evade aren’t all that powerful.

^understatement of the year.

Also, their defenses aren’t that high. Other classes have higher defenses, even ele have active defenses, to compensate for their “stale-mate state” during cooldowns

Good thieves eat ele for breakfast.

Nikaido.3457:

RedSpectrum.1975:

To compensate, a thief’s skills are not as powerful as other class skills.

I guess spammable blind, spammable teleports, spammable stun and evade aren’t all that powerful.

^understatement of the year.

Also, their defenses aren’t that high. Other classes have higher defenses, even ele have active defenses, to compensate for their “stale-mate state” during cooldowns

Good thieves eat ele for breakfast.

Blinds, teleports, and evades hurt you right? I never said the elementalist was perfect. But they were supposed to be actively defensive, to compensate for the low armor low hp. A thief only has stealth and evades, no other mitigation to reduce dmg taken. And a good ele should give a thief a run for their money, if they dont make them run.

it doesnt really have anything to do with the philosophy behind thieves as much as the actually mechanic of the class initiative. id really like to know from the devs why they made this decision because it blatently separates thieves from every other class. i think thief skills need to be nerfed for this reason because of how initiative is a periodically regenerating currency(with traits and signets its super powerful) and the skills that use initiative are a little two powerful. Like heartseeker, and how you can spam it on an enemy about 7 times in a row lol. Thats a little off topic anyway.

SkylightMoon.1980:

it doesnt really have anything to do with the philosophy behind thieves as much as the actually mechanic of the class initiative. id really like to know from the devs why they made this decision because it blatently separates thieves from every other class. i think thief skills need to be nerfed for this reason because of how initiative is a periodically regenerating currency(with traits and signets its super powerful) and the skills that use initiative are a little two powerful. Like heartseeker, and how you can spam it on an enemy about 7 times in a row lol. Thats a little off topic anyway.

Well an “experienced” thief wouldn’t waste that much ini to spam one skill that you can avoid a fair amount. Our crucial skills costs too much ini to waste needless skills. And thief skills aren’t as hard hitting as you think. A warriros eviscerate hits even harder than out backstab. Backstab by itslef is actually a fairly normal skill. it only gets its notorious dmg from crits and hitting from behind. And the philosophy has plenty to do with the mechanic. If they didn’t think thieves should be that way, initiative wouldnt have been there. Same way the necromancer was thought to be the master of conditions, so they have deathshroud, a lot of condi transfers, and very high health. Nerfing thief skills would cripple the class.
EDIT: it’s late screw spelling errors :p

SkylightMoon.1980:

it doesnt really have anything to do with the philosophy behind thieves as much as the actually mechanic of the class initiative. id really like to know from the devs why they made this decision because it blatently separates thieves from every other class. i think thief skills need to be nerfed for this reason because of how initiative is a periodically regenerating currency(with traits and signets its super powerful) and the skills that use initiative are a little two powerful. Like heartseeker, and how you can spam it on an enemy about 7 times in a row lol. Thats a little off topic anyway.

They actually buffed initiative regen at the end of last year, because they nerfed iniative gain via traits hard. The meta thief in PvP used to be evasion spam, which was the main reason for the nerf to the traits, in order to prevent other builds from taking a severe hit like the evade spam builds iniative regen was buffed from 1 per 1.25 seconds to 1 per second. ANet has been monitoring the thief closely and making minor nerfs ever since, with the most recent one being a nerf to Infiltrator’s Return.

If you do the math, over the course of a minute the ele can use its 2 – 4 skills on D/D about 55 times in that 60 seconds between all attunements.

A warrior over the course of a minute can use its 2 – 4 skills on a S/S & GS set about 36 time in that 60 seconds between the two weapons.

A thief over the course of a minute has a base 72 initiative to play with and on a D/D & Shortbow set the average initiative cost per skill is about 4 initiative. Meaning in 60 seconds they can use about 18 skills.

tl;dr
Even though it seems like the thief can use it’s skills more often because it has a different weapon skill mechanic, it actually doesn’t.

^^^Forgot that crucial bit of info, well done. other classes bypass CD by simply switching weapons. A thief’s initiative however does not replenish when weapons are swapped.

Yesterday i could hit a thief in www without him noticing me….
I hit him with a knockdown, chill, immobilize and finally another knockdown…

If you don t evade a single attack by a thief you deserve to die and its l2p.

A thief so bad to gettinghit by 4 CC/cond, can just rofl in your face cleanse and break everything stealth and escape miles away….and i suspect someone will try to say its l2p even this..

That is indeed unique…the ability to never pay for mistakes and a skill floor of a potato…

And the fact that people can kill some thieves in www is because of that broken mechanic attracting bad players….but if you meet a decent one he won t die (see 99,999% WWW scouts).

P.S. to prove that even further you can just see the average skill level of thieves in PvE where the skill floor is quite high instead.

LordByron.8369:

Yesterday i could hit a thief in www without him noticing me….
I hit him with a knockdown, chill, immobilize and finally another knockdown…

If you don t evade a single attack by a thief you deserve to die and its l2p.

A thief so bad to gettinghit by 4 CC/cond, can just rofl in your face cleanse and break everything stealth and escape miles away….and i suspect someone will try to say its l2p even this..

That is indeed unique…the ability to never pay for mistakes and a skill floor of a potato…

And the fact that people can kill some thieves in www is because of that broken mechanic attracting bad players….but if you meet a decent one he won t die (see 99,999% WWW scouts).

Wrong thread
Stealth != Initiative

LordByron.8369:

Yesterday i could hit a thief in www without him noticing me….
I hit him with a knockdown, chill, immobilize and finally another knockdown…

If you don t evade a single attack by a thief you deserve to die and its l2p.

A thief so bad to gettinghit by 4 CC/cond, can just rofl in your face cleanse and break everything stealth and escape miles away….and i suspect someone will try to say its l2p even this..

That is indeed unique…the ability to never pay for mistakes and a skill floor of a potato…

And the fact that people can kill some thieves in www is because of that broken mechanic attracting bad players….but if you meet a decent one he won t die (see 99,999% WWW scouts).

Well once again, you’re giving thieves too much credit. Why not complain about a warrior dashing away using rush and whirlwind and you can’t do a thing about it? Stun breakers are no excuse to bash a class, Shadowstep was meant for that purpose, to escape danger to either escape or retaliate. Using 4CC’s in a row is never a good idea

It’s the main reason I like thief most. All the other classes just spam everything as soon as the cooldown is over. With thief I can make a choice what to spend my initiative on.

…if only we had the energy system from GW1 from all classes and skills on a much shorter cooldown. It was so much better…

Its due to initiative that they can break everything and go unpunished….
And initiative + mobility + stealth is the issue.

Expecially since initiative is unaffected by chill that should be changed asap

LordByron.8369:

Its due to initiative that they can break everything and go unpunished….
And initiative + mobility + stealth is the issue.

Expecially since initiative is unaffected by chill that should be changed asap

In your scenario Shadow Step and Stealth are what break everything, what would that have to do with initiative?

LordByron.8369:

Its due to initiative that they can break everything and go unpunished….
And initiative + mobility + stealth is the issue.

Expecially since initiative is unaffected by chill that should be changed asap

Shadowstep is a utility, and no skill that uses initiative breaks stuns, not anymore

I may be wrong but i think most mobility comes fromo initiative and also that some skills are related to shadow step and are based on initiative…

That is how thieves trolls people at spawns…something no other class can do.

Why do they have initiative?

Burst.

If you think about it, after the burst, they have a generalized cooldown so the thief fits in this.

A guardian being able to spam Mighty Blow would be OP or any other skill actually.

The initiative fits well the thieves class, just leave them be, as you should let the other classes be with their per-skill cooldowns.

Lol I rember when I mained a thief and tried to debate the class and how it wasn’t op at all. Then I got bored with it and rolled a different class and realized I was talking bullkitten and was just trying to defend my class from getting nerfed.

Whenever I see someone post a thief op thread I just laugh as I see all the thieves coming in full blast saying its a l2p issue and thieves have this high skill ceiling somewhere. Either I’m an incredible gamer and don’t realize it or thief is just as easy as warrior to play and all you gotta do is stealth backstab, stealth backstab. Oh you can’t see me? Too bad, take 6k+ to the face, I’ll just vanish again. The only time you press a different button is when you get cc’d or you get low on health and you just sr and run away. I wish they would just redesign the class with CD’s and make it so it didn’t “solely” rely on stealth and backstabs, or pistol whip if you play s/p. I would go running back to my thief to play it again because it might actually be fun and not cheaply boring =\

Sorry, its the truth thieves. You all should be screaming for the class to be co.lletely redesigned as well but I’m sure if you do so you’re afraid Anet will nerf it to the ground instead. I don’t see how you all can keep playing the class when its so repetitive. I mean I guess killing people quickly has a fun of its own but it could be so much better. I love bursty classes as well and would hope if they redesigned it it would keep that but the overall initiative and stealth reliance class mechanic really needs to be fixed.

Although I passionately hate Thieves… I’m a fair person… And just because I hate them doesn’t mean I would suggest a change. All professions have some kind of unique attribute. Initiative is a part of the Thieves unique-ness. I believe a big part of the reasoning behind this is because of their fragile nature. They are meant to strike and kill their foes as quickly as possible which shouldn’t mean having to wait on cooldowns only spending ones initiative wisely.
If you think only a Thief has a unique design, you might also consider the Engineer who has access to multiple “kits” all with different skills and utility with no cooldown between swapping kits. Or, the Guardian who basically has built in signets, Virtues as they are called, and instead of having to use a utility slot for health regeneration one of their virtues already provides this.

Cush.4063:

Lol I rember when I mained a thief and tried to debate the class and how it wasn’t op at all. Then I got bored with it and rolled a different class and realized I was talking bullkitten and was just trying to defend my class from getting nerfed.

Whenever I see someone post a thief op thread I just laugh as I see all the thieves coming in full blast saying its a l2p issue and thieves have this high skill ceiling somewhere. Either I’m an incredible gamer and don’t realize it or thief is just as easy as warrior to play and all you gotta do is stealth backstab, stealth backstab. Oh you can’t see me? Too bad, take 6k+ to the face, I’ll just vanish again. The only time you press a different button is when you get cc’d or you get low on health and you just sr and run away. I wish they would just redesign the class with CD’s and make it so it didn’t “solely” rely on stealth and backstabs, or pistol whip if you play s/p. I would go running back to my thief to play it again because it might actually be fun and not cheaply boring =\

Sorry, its the truth thieves. You all should be screaming for the class to be co.lletely redesigned as well but I’m sure if you do so you’re afraid Anet will nerf it to the ground instead. I don’t see how you all can keep playing the class when its so repetitive. I mean I guess killing people quickly has a fun of its own but it could be so much better. I love bursty classes as well and would hope if they redesigned it it would keep that but the overall initiative and stealth reliance class mechanic really needs to be fixed.

Omg I love this guy… Someone who UNDERSTANDS, lol. I won’t go on about it but this is the truth… You may be able to kill people fast and easy but fact of the matter is it’s not hard to play a Thief. I’ve played one as well and it’s just a cheese profession. There is very little skill involved… Although there certainly are players who do have skill in their strategies, most use the same basic methods. Stealth + backstab = win. So tell people it’s hard to play all you want… It ain’t. Sure you’re glassy with few condition cleanses/stability… Ever played a Ranger? Same idea but they can’t stealth/blind spam or hit massive crits and use a bunch of gap closers to escape if they’re in trouble.

I played a thief for the first full year of this game. After switching classes it was amazing at what a difference it made. Theif has lower HP, lower armor, and only so-so sustained dps. The only strategy I could use was hit and run and hope for the best. If I didn’t kill my target in the first 2 seconds of a fight I had no choice but to run away and wait for all my ini to regen because I was worthless.

I can just destroy thieves now that I know all their tricks. My necro can easily take on 2 thieves at once now without a problem. I don’t always get the kill but they almost never kill me.

I would suggest playing a thief for a few months then you won’t have any problems quickly dispatching them. They are a one trick pony and once you understand the trick they are just free kills.

To the OP, every class has a unique mechanic. Ele can wield 4 weapons at once, giving them many many more skills to use then thief. Engineer has kits and turrets and bundle weapons that give them multiple skill options. Warrior skills have low CD and almost no swap CD so they can continually swap back and forth between weapons and always have moves available. In order for a thief to burst someone down they need to use their entire ini bar meaning they can’t use any skills at all for 10-15 seconds. No other class has that problem.

I’ve played Mesmer(main), Guardian, Warrior and Thief and I have to say, Thief is the hardest one to use, specially because of initiative, the stealth mechanics are not easy to master either and their skills are most definately NOT op, are they anoying? yes, are they hard to catch? yes and the initiative system fits perfectly thier concept, but any warrior can out dps a thief, any mesmer can catch a thief, any guard can block a thief’s burst, but also any good thief can roflstomp any other class, it all comes down to the player’s skill.

Cooldowns are stupid. I hate that GW2 got this mechanic from WoW and decided not to use mana instead, sish they copied Diablo II’s mana system instead!

Not trolling at all here… but Every class is unique, not to mention Thief is one of the more “bland” and standard classes as far as MMOs go they work very similar to other MMOs. (WOW and SWTOR both have action system for Thief types). Engineer is truly a unique class to GW also Mesmer. Or are you simply asking why do they not use MANA (Warrior does not either)? It is because it is the only way to mitigate the DPS burst DMG from a thief. Well best currently known way. You could put the moves as higher CD but they need to be able to burst but with in reason. I honestly believe every class plays very differently.

Another "thief op he has no cooldowns plz nurf " thread.

The skills are balanced around being spammable, hence our condi durations are short and our damage coefficients are much less than say warrior. “spammable” skills just lets us make quick decisions with less punishment, it doesn’t make us better though when you consider the resource cost those actions may have, making you have 0 weapon skills.

Devs why did you move this post to the thief forums!? You just dropped a cat into piranha infested waters!!!

RedSpectrum.1975:

To compensate, a thief’s skills are not as powerful(by themselves)as other class skills.

12-16k Damage in one hit begs to differ.
Initiative was a failed experiment. However – this is Anet and we all know that they REFUSE to accept taking blame when they have done something SO stupid or SO broken and would rather just force EVERYONE to live with it.

Dhuumfire is an example before its release Necromancers were ALL saying that they didnt need or want it and what do you know…It was too powerful so rather than say “kitten we made a mistake, sorry” they just went ahead and kept nerfing it and everything else they could get there hands on….

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

RedSpectrum.1975:

To compensate, a thief’s skills are not as powerful(by themselves)as other class skills.

12-16k Damage in one hit begs to differ.
Initiative was a failed experiment. However – this is Anet and we all know that they REFUSE to accept taking blame when they have done something SO stupid or SO broken and would rather just force EVERYONE to live with it.

Dhuumfire is an example before its release Necromancers were ALL saying that they didnt need or want it and what do you know…It was too powerful so rather than say “kitten we made a mistake, sorry” they just went ahead and kept nerfing it and everything else they could get there hands on….

Once again, let’s take a number that’s only high because of critical values, might stacks and position and assume that that is that skill’s actual power rating

backstab
Eviscerate

So backstab from the front, which happens often mind you, only hits for around 400 which is pretty basic. From behind however it still only hits for around 800. It gets its numbers from might stacks and crits. By itself, the skill is not a god skill. Eviscerate on the other hand Hits much harder at its strongest point, doesn’t need to hit from behind AND has more range. And I’ve seen some nasty numbers from that skill. I seriously think people just find anything they can to bash this class.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

RedSpectrum.1975:

To compensate, a thief’s skills are not as powerful(by themselves)as other class skills.

12-16k Damage in one hit begs to differ.
Initiative was a failed experiment. However – this is Anet and we all know that they REFUSE to accept taking blame when they have done something SO stupid or SO broken and would rather just force EVERYONE to live with it.

Dhuumfire is an example before its release Necromancers were ALL saying that they didnt need or want it and what do you know…It was too powerful so rather than say “kitten we made a mistake, sorry” they just went ahead and kept nerfing it and everything else they could get there hands on….

I like the line initiative was a failed experiment. It’s very funny.

Initiative is the same concept as mana or energy, that’s what makes it so humorous.

SkylightMoon.1980:

it doesnt really have anything to do with the philosophy behind thieves as much as the actually mechanic of the class initiative. id really like to know from the devs why they made this decision because it blatently separates thieves from every other class. i think thief skills need to be nerfed for this reason because of how initiative is a periodically regenerating currency(with traits and signets its super powerful) and the skills that use initiative are a little two powerful. Like heartseeker, and how you can spam it on an enemy about 7 times in a row lol. Thats a little off topic anyway.

You mentioned the traits and signets making it more powerful but that’s a single build and if they nerfed it that would be the only real useful setup. There is no reason to nerf a classes entire offense over one build.

SkylightMoon.1980:

I didnt really think about this til now but why are thieves the only class in the game that has a unique design. In terms of weapons, none of its weapons have a skill cooldown, they have a currency cost, called initiative. Why is it that every other class in the game must obey a time cooldown? Not that I am upset but it seems so trivial thieves have this pretty significant difference compared to every other class in the game. Why do eles and necros not have mana? and warriors and guardians have their own type of special skill currency? Or why didnt anet just decide to make thieves obey the same time cooldown restrictment that other classes did? I think its quite cool thinking about how immensely pvp and wvw would change if every class had a currency cost on skills compared to cooldowns.

Really thiefs are a class centered on breaking the traditional rules of this game. Their stealth makes them a viable Glass Cannon, high burst and extremely high movement and include their initiative. Their attacks deal less condition duration, higher damage, and they’re extremely high risk high reward with their extremely punishable initiative waste. Yes other classes can burn all of their attacks, but they can change weapons. We don’t have a different initiative pool for our other weapons the way other classes have other weapons. I’m not complaining just saying the counter point.