Guild Wars 2

So, here’s a good one for thieves. In the old world (tested in Straits of Devastation), if you go swimming with one of the Daredevil dodges equipped, when you emerge from the water, your dodge goes back to the normal animation and loses its effect.

Bounding Dodger:

- The animation returns to a normal dodge
- You lose the Leap Finisher
- You retain the damage increase buff after dodging

Dash:

- The animation returns to a normal dodge
- You retain the damage reduction buff after dodging

Impaling Lotus seems to work the same. The underwater dodge animation for Impaling Lotus is also working fine.

Regards,

- Coryphaeus

EDIT (10/28/2015): After a little more time in the old world, it seems that this bug just happens. It doesn’t have anything to do with swimming; the new dodges simply deactivate after the first one. I haven’t tested whether it’s a time thing or if you get one and done.

Greets,

Just went on a spending spree and ended up buying an extra Bank Slot Expansion token. I’d thought, as with the Collection Expander, that a message would come up precluding purchasing more than an account could have.

Is there a way to “return” the extra token and get the gems back?

Regards,

- Coryphaeus

Well, let it be said explicitly, for devs to read, and, if you agree, we can transmogrify this thread into a proto-petition:

We don’t really want to be lighter-armoured warriors. We’re thieves. Staying engaged by just standing and delivering is the province of the tanks, and glad we are to have them and to leave them in that role.

Let us be the evasive, mobile melee combatants. We don’t need to dodge all of the time, but when we do, let it count. It’s our best option for damage mitigation, and adding boosts to the combat skill dodges (Evasive Strike, Pistol Whip, etc.) would go a long way toward getting thieves to stay engaged.

Regards,

- Coryphaeus

There’s still room for stealth in a dodge-y thief, but speccing for dodge-iness usually means sacrificing stealth options, unless you want to give up the higher-end damage options.

Again, if the aim is to encourage thieves to stay engaged, this’d be a nice boost and incentive.

Regards,

- Coryphaeus

Finally a real reason to promote a trait up a tier or two.

Otherwise, Tricks 3 could just be an exception.

Honestly, I’m mostly just referring to Acrobatics 2, Power of Inertia.

Regards,

- Coryphaeus

Yeah, took the idea from the on-block business that guards and warriors have.

I think it’s appropriate for thieves, both mechanically and thematically. And again, it keeps with the rewarding of thieves staying in combat. We shouldn’t be stand-and-deliver types, otherwise we’re just lighter-armoured warriors without significantly higher damage potential.

I’d love to put a little more utility into Acro-style combat.

Regards,

- Coryphaeus

Just a suggestion for consideration by the devs and forumites, in line with the “rewarding thieves that stay in combat” philosophy.

We have access to a couple of decent on-dodge traits. Would it be possible or plausible to have them affect skills that evade as well?

I’m thinking specifically of the Evasive Strike on Sword. With the recent changes to Infiltrator’s Strike, we’ve had to look at alternatives. While Larcenous Strike is quite nice (was nicer with two boon-steal), I would love to get a little boost to Evasive Strike, which’d give us a nice alternative on which to spend our Initiative.

It’d also give a little more utility to things like Pistol Whip, which are still difficult to pull off effectively in WvW, where losing stealth options leaves a thief rather open. Likewise, things like the (single) Might stack on-dodge would give a nice little boost to Shortbow.

Regards,

- Coryphaeus

Greets,

I’m Coryphaeus, and I’m a Sword/Dagger Thief. The majority of my time in-game is spent running detached from, but in the orbit of, our server’s zergs and GvG groups, harassing the edges of other groups or picking off stragglers. Sword provides a great deal of mobility, as well as the ability to get in and out of trouble.

I believe that the upcoming change adding a cast time to Infiltrator’s Return (“IR”) is the wrong way to address the primary issue that, I’ve gathered from the Dev posts, it is designed to fix. It will certainly stop people from using it to cheap-stomp, but a cast time has practical implications that, perhaps, do not seem as daunting as they do on paper.

Usage of Infiltrator’s Return

IR rewards good planning on the part of a Thief. I use it primarily to set up an escape route when I know I will (a) be entering a densely packed group of enemies, or (b) know that I am being targeted for being a detached Thief by a large group. This latter situation arises mostly in GvG’s, where you’re pulled, knocked down, and very efficiently focused down.

It is this situation that I am most concerned about. According to an earlier Dev post, the addition of a minuscule cast time to prevent cheap-stomping seemed to be regarded as a minor issue. While a fraction of a second is not a large amount on paper, the difference, practically, between instant and cast-time-d is immense.

The utility Shadowstep is an option to escape this same situation and others like it, but I believe that having to rely entirely upon Shadowstep will diminish Sword Thieves more than is reasonable to address a problem that may be solved in another way. I am not a developer and have no grasp of what would be an acceptable alternative, balanced approach.

As a Sword Thief, I rely on mobility to be effective. Mobility, in this case, is not simply movement across the battlefield, but also the ability to escape from situations. IR fulfills this function admirably, but, again, only if the Sword Thief plans ahead of time by placing the return point.

I know that, when dealing with organized groups, I will be stunned, knocked down, and otherwise shut down. In the most common situations that I find myself in, the duration of this shut down is more than enough time to down me. With a cast time added to IR, if I have slotted Shadowstep, I have still lost half of my options for escape,

It seems like a minor change, but I still remember the global addition of one second to the Revealed debuff some time ago. One second is certainly greater than the proposed third-of-a-second change, but I want to emphasize that it is a third of a second compared to instant, which, I believe, makes it a much more substantial change than the numbers might suggest.

Initiative

This was another issue brought up in another previous Dev post; that IR could be used every 20 seconds, on average, to clear a condition. In the large combat situation as I described in the previous section, conditions tend to be applied much more often and consistently than IR could conceivably clear.

Furthermore, if you’re using all of your initiative for Infiltrator’s Strike (“IS”)/IR, you’re unlikely to be doing anything else effective. I cannot say whether the increased Initiative over time regeneration will substantially affect this point, but having experimented with the Quick Recovery trait, it’s the long lapse in between extra ticks that counts, and in that period, you’re still out either your Initiative or your effectiveness.

Conclusion

The cast time on Infiltrator’s Return is more substantial and detrimental a change to Sword Thieves than it appears to be on paper. The problem that it addresses should be fixed, but the practical negative effects on general Sword Thief play of this change are not commensurate with the benefit.

Regards,

- Coryphaeus