Guild Wars 2

Really, I can’t count how many times I died from last refuge. I think it’s the only trait in the entire game that hinders you instead of being useful.

Lucky Shot.7650:

Really, I can’t count how many times I died from last refuge. I think it’s the only trait in the entire game that hinders you instead of being useful.

Working as intended, unfortunately. It’s called Last Refuge because it’s supposed to end in your death. Would be awesome to have it changed to something better though, but fixing our broken skills/traits seems to be on Anet’s low priority list.

The problem with Last Refuge is that it was designed for a game without the Revealed mechanism, as was GW2 at launch. The trait has just been overlooked because it still helps every now and then… It would be awesome to have it say “At 25% HP, become immune to the Revealed debuff for 5 seconds. 90 second cooldown.”

they just need last refuge to overpower reveal and not give reveal. like make it a separate kind of elite invis. just an idea

Pentalic.5409:

The problem with Last Refuge is that it was designed for a game without the Revealed mechanism, as was GW2 at launch. The trait has just been overlooked because it still helps every now and then… It would be awesome to have it say “At 25% HP, become immune to the Revealed debuff for 5 seconds. 90 second cooldown.”

Only downside to that would be… Thief can do multiple backstabs with no revealed….

I’d rather have an empty minor trait slot, instead of Last Refuge. As it is now, this trait is “You get Revealed when your health reaches 25% (90-second cooldown)”.

May it be because I’m trying to C&D, or because my Disabling Shot/Trick Shot is still mid-air or I’m shooting Black Powder, Last Refuge gets me Revealed all the time. If I’m falling below 25% health it’s obvious I’m in a fight, and in a fight I’m usually attacking, should I peacefully wait Last Refuge to trigger instead?

I’d really like to get a developer post on this matter.

@jportell….only 2….and thats if the opponent cooperates

Yep was having a good duel with another thief today, went to c&d, health went to 25% and revealed, pretty much ending the duel right there. It has to be one of the most poorly implemented traits out of any class.

Travlane.5948:

they just need last refuge to overpower reveal and not give reveal. like make it a separate kind of elite invis. just an idea

This would work

Though honestly, is it only me that doesn’t seem to be bothered by this trait? In fact, the trait actually saves me most of the time .. if I by any chance should drop to 30%, I’d be playing more defensively anyway, mostly using my heal (which ends up in me having 6s stealth instead of 3)

Travlane.5948:

@jportell….only 2….and thats if the opponent cooperates

2 backstabs with no reveal… You don’t think a 5 point minor trait would be over the top with something like that?

They need to add one of the Major traits between I or VI in place of Last Refuge and then rework Last refuge as a major trait.
Ex: Shadow Protector as minor would be an improvement to Thief survival without making 5 points in SA a must for every build.

Seth.4927:

They need to add one of the Major traits between I or VI in place of Last Refuge and then rework Last refuge as a major trait.
Ex: Shadow Protector as minor would be an improvement to Thief survival without making 5 points in SA a must for every build.

I think something good would be if last refuge overrode revealed for 2s that way if the thief wakittenting the buttons to fast they had a chance to stop when it shoed them in stealth… 5s with no revealed is just a little too long you know.

People are confusing Last Refuge with Shadow Refuge. That’s why there are comments like “Only downside to that would be… Thief can do multiple backstabs with no revealed….”

Last Refuge is the minor trait in Shadow arts after investing 5points, that makes you go invisible at 25% health.

I myself am not really sure about this. Stealth based thieves already have good ways of disengaging fights, and there are toooooooons of whine about this. I wouldn’t want to change this skill, so that there is even more whine… Also, for me, this skill saved my life like 60% of the time. Quite OK I think for a 5 point trait.

Speaking of Shadow Refuge, don’t you love when you are attacking with the short bow, shadowstep away, drop SR and stand in it stealthless for its whole duration, realizing LR revealed you?

Last refuge works great. It helps me more than kills me. You just need to learn to watch your health and understand when it will activate.

Youkay.5294:

People are confusing Last Refuge with Shadow Refuge. That’s why there are comments like “Only downside to that would be… Thief can do multiple backstabs with no revealed….”

In fact the reason for the trait name being Last Refuge is because during beta it summoned a Shadow Refuge instead of Blinding Powder. At some point they changed it to Blinding Powder but they kept the trait name. I think it would be awesome to have SR again instead of BP, that way even if you screwed with revealed you would have access to a Dark Field, and if you waited long enough inside you could get the last pulse of stealth.

But as I don’t see it happening, I think it would be better to root for a complete change meant to help the trait line instead of killing the Thief.

Lokheit.7943:

Youkay.5294:

People are confusing Last Refuge with Shadow Refuge. That’s why there are comments like “Only downside to that would be… Thief can do multiple backstabs with no revealed….”

In fact the reason for the trait name being Last Refuge is because during beta it summoned a Shadow Refuge instead of Blinding Powder. At some point they changed it to Blinding Powder but they kept the trait name. I think it would be awesome to have SR again instead of BP, that way even if you screwed with revealed you would have access to a Dark Field, and if you waited long enough inside you could get the last pulse of stealth.

But as I don’t see it happening, I think it would be better to root for a complete change meant to help the trait line instead of killing the Thief.

I think the problem of getting Revealed would persist.

Last Refuge - Create a smoke field when your health reachs 25% (90 seconds cooldown).

Praise the lord, the skill is useless, no more!

Was just about to make a thread on this, but instead im going to bump this one. I know its ancient but this is still a problem for thieves. Im really getting tired of a trait that basically grants revealed at 25% health. I’d be happy with an option to turn this blasted trait off. It helps the enemy.

Lucky Shot.7650:

I think it’s the only trait in the entire game that hinders you instead of being useful.

Hard to Catch.

As long as I have played Thief, this trait still occasionally kills me. No one would complain about Last Refuge if it wasn’t a requirement if you plan to invest in Shadow Arts. Hell, just remove the trait entirely and don’t even put anything there. It would at least be more useful than it is now.

I wouldn’t do the whole “no Revealed” thing, but I think that there pretty obviously needs to be something else there. The trait is just terrible, and whenever I play stealth, I’d rather not have to look at my health every 5 seconds to see how low I’m getting and then roughly calculate 1/4 of my health in my head (which I can do, but shouldn’t be prioritizing that over playing). I’d be much happier with that one less thing to worry about.

I have a feeling it’s a trait meant for WvW, because it has saved my life so kitten often there. Getting beaten up by a group of people constantly knocking me around, and suddenly it kicks in, giving me stealth and confusing them long enough for me to start dashing away, throwing every stealth giving ability I have out. That baby saves lives in WvW.

RyuDragnier.9476:

I have a feeling it’s a trait meant for WvW, because it has saved my life so kitten often there. Getting beaten up by a group of people constantly knocking me around, and suddenly it kicks in, giving me stealth and confusing them long enough for me to start dashing away, throwing every stealth giving ability I have out. That baby saves lives in WvW.

Shadow step saves me in those sorts of situations, which i tend to avoid most of the time anyway. Of course Last refuge has saved me in the past, but 95% of the time, its killed me.
I want it gone. I don’t even care if Anet doesn’t give us a replacement.

Just plz Anet, get rid of it.

Instead of removing Reanimator, like every sane Necromancer has begged them to do for months, they buffed it.

We’re not losing Last Refuge.

Auesis.7301:

Instead of removing Reanimator, like every sane Necromancer has begged them to do for months, they buffed it.

We’re not losing Last Refuge.

This is true, but Reanimator doesn’t spell death for necro’s in a fight. 3s of revealed for thieves is a lifetime, especially when you don’t notice it, due to Bp dropping without warning.

They just need to change the mechanics of reveal to say, one attempt of stealth clears the revealed debuff. It prevents spammable stealth for the most part unless you’re willing to sacrifice a lot of initiative to get there. Last refuge may still cause problems this way, but not nearly as many.

Atmosphere.7451:

They just need to change the mechanics of reveal to say, one attempt of stealth clears the revealed debuff. It prevents spammable stealth for the most part unless you’re willing to sacrifice a lot of initiative to get there. Last refuge may still cause problems this way, but not nearly as many.

Nope tbh, i would still rather do without it completely than have this halfway solution.^^^

Yeah I’m pretty sick of this trait contributing to 50% of my deaths.

I think I get it .. Since SA tree is so overly concentrated in stealth and gives ability to perma stealth (at least pre-patch). They introduced this trait to sabotage you at least 50% of the time. Thus reducing the times you can escape!

make last refuge optional and make one of the five ten skill traits non optional like slowed pulse. Slowed pulse is not OP.

The arenanet can see if anyone takes last refuge. Less than 1% of thieves will. Problem solved with no re-coding or admitting that they were wrong.

They can say “we felt the extremely popular last refuge was far too powerful so we moved it up a tier and made it optional for the legions of thieves that cannot live without it, and in return gave you a slight regen to help with survivability”

they can then say that is the most taken selected thief trait. Everyone winns.

Well….I hated this trait for the longest time…but the more I’ve learned to watch my health and expect this to proc, the more it’s been a benefit to me.

I think I’m ok with this trait now.

I have pretty accurate numbers, as I paid close attention to this during the wvw season. would be great, if someone could compare this to his experiences.
I run a pretty straightforward D/D backstab build without rejuvenation, so the numbers will probably be different for 10/30/30.

Numbers are from the begin of the season till now.

Times, Last Refuge outright killed me by double-triggering confusion: 2

Times, Last Refuge outright killed me by popping mid-CnD or just a split second before a planned CnD in a situation, where I would have otherwise been able to disengage or win the fight: 8-10.

Times, Last Refuge did not specifically kill me, as I was in over my head anyway and last refuge popping mid-attack or at an awkward time only sped up the process of me dying: 15-20. I still raged :P
(with shadow rejuvenation, some of these situation might have been survivable, if LR didn’t pop)

Times, Last Refuge helped by prolonging already active stealth: 10-15
(I don’t run a full 30 in shadow arts, so it’s hard to tell, how much having longer stealth actually helped. Also, as I tend to be more mindful of my distance to opponents than someone who has a huge regeneration backing them up, the number pretty much reflects my playstyle. It helped with some jukes, but in other situations, all it did was giving away my position to the opponent by suddenly creating a smoke cloud on the ground.)

Times, Last Refuge helped conceal my movement during a retreat from a ranged opponent: 5

Times, Last Refuge saved my kitten by popping when I was stunlocked and out of options: 3

Now, what would be useful?
1) Banish the trait into the major traits and beef it up somewhat(like also giving protection). Maybe put another major trait in minor.
2) Rework the thing to do something completely different.
3) Replace the stealth effect with a special effect, which doesn’t trigger revealed, when broken, but behaves like stealth in any other way.

Last Refuge has been mentioned here one too many times already. The devs seem to be very afraid of making changes to the thief profession.

Rafahil.2857:

Last Refuge has been mentioned here one too many times already. The devs seem to be very afraid of making changes to buffing the thief profession.

Auesis.7301:

Instead of removing Reanimator, like every sane Necromancer has begged them to do for months, they buffed it.

We’re not losing Last Refuge.

Next patch:
Last refuge: Cooldown reduced to 30.

On a more serious note, I for my part don’t mind that little bugger from reanimator. It’s a tiny poke of damage and shields one ally from AoE in a blob. There is only one situation, where this trait actually tries to outright kill you and that’s Lupicus.
Last Refuge can kill you anywhere, any time. If you have 10+ stacks of confusion and try to cleanse them while below 40% hp… boom. Dead. If you are in a fierce melee battle and try to CnD to regain some spacing… Poof. Revealed. Possibly dead.

Even if Last Refuge used to drop Shadow Refuge, it wouldn’t work now because of the tripwire.. You’d drop a giant KILL ME sign in the middle of a battle and you’d HAVE to stand in it or you’d get revealed anyways. Either way you die.

With that said.. Last Refuge doesn’t USUALLY kill me, in fact it saves me many times, and that’s with me not giving a whole lot of thought into when it happens, but I play a build where I don’t AOE ankitten ot constantly in people’s faces so it’s different for me.

I’d do anything to get rid of it. You guys seems to be interested in a replacement for it, or maybe a buff for it?

All I want is for it to be gone. Dont care about replacements. It would make my day to just not have any minor trait in that slot of SA.

Please Anet get rid of 3s of revealed at 25% health aka “last refuge”. Fitting name for it really, as it will probably be the last thing you ever do on that life.

Rafahil.2857:

Last Refuge has been mentioned here one too many times already. The devs seem to be very afraid of making changes to the thief profession.

Except when it comes to messing with things that aren’t really broken in the first place.

Its not really a change to the spec, just allow us to deactivate it. The only reason I see for its continued existence is if Anet is intentionally nerfing thieves by having that trait there.

Just change it to god kitten 3s of invulnerability or smth… “Ohh but invulnerability doesnt fit thief profile, last refuge does !”. You’re right there, Chucky! Dieing couse of broken game mechanics fits thiefs profile very nice (not even joking here) !

Maybe at 25% health you get granted an F2 blinding powder that you have 2 seconds to use before it expires?

This would be nice, but I’d imagine that it would require some serious coding.

style.6173:

Last refuge works great. It helps me more than kills me. You just need to learn to watch your health and understand when it will activate.

Pretty much this^
Also if in gw2 as a thief your 90% of hp can get bursted in about 1 second, so from time to time it will happen to die because of this trait

I’d say the kill/save ratio of Last Refuge is about 50/50 with me.

It’s much more problematic with Dagger Offhand than any other weapon due to Cloak and Dagger. It’s not nearly as bad with Pistol Offhand although it can still be annoying.

Either way it needs to be changed, either like Decoy in so that it ignores Revealed or replaced completely.

Hrm, the Reveal is annoying but I can’t say its ever gotten me killed. As a matter of fact, Last Refuge has saved me on more than one occasion.

Bumping this, living in the dream that last refuge aka 3 seconds of revealed will be removed. I don’t care what trait you replace this with, or even if its removed.

Just…. please.

Got killed by this a few times yesterday. Usually when my life is low I’d try to CnD off someone to stealth. At 25% HP and in melee range, being revealed from that CnD is usually a guaranteed death.

You make it overcomplicated. This trait needs a fix not an alteration.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Blinding_Powder
It says “Use Blinding Powder when your health reaches a certain threshold.”
and as follows “Cancels any activation time when used.”
It’s blatantly obvious that Last Refuge does everything that BP but cancels the action. All they have to do is make it cancel current action.
No more mid-cnd stealths; mid-hs stealths, etc..
Cheers,
TJ

BUMP. Last refuge is such a horrible trait. I’m surprised the devs havnt fixed it yet. At least give us a feature to unequip minor traits

get rid of Last Refuge. i would rather not have a minor trait in SA at all then have that crap passive ability to fall back on

3second smoke screen. Done.