Guild Wars 2

No solo queue because it’s another test season elegiggle xDDDD

I personally have mentioned (a while ago) how they can overhaul the stealth mechanic while still adding solid counter-play. Adding a silhouette to anyone in stealth (similar to the one visible that you see when your character is in stealth) it will allow enemies to see that person and allow people to easily track them if they are paying close attention.

I’ll honestly say the stealth mechanic in this game requires more than a simple solution like,“stealth skills that were blocked, evaded or missed now reveal”. It doesn’t do anything to thieves when they can just eat blocks (aegis) and just stealth spam until the block duration on weapon skills fades.

Why does it even matter if burn is op or not with the disgusting levels of power creep in this game? Everything in this game in its current state is at a such ridiculous level of power creep that balance as flown so far at the window that the developers are just giving any class whatever they want.

Shadow.1345:

EoNxBoNx.9213:

Shadow.1345:

StickerHappy.8052:

Shadow.1345:

StickerHappy.8052:

Shadow.1345:

I was just in a match and saw I was paired with two other thieves. I didn’t want to be in a Ranked match with 3 thieves so I switched to warrior. My second match as a warrior and being a thief win day there was 2 thieves on the opposing team. Early in I was defending a point and the thief went into stealth. My toon’s life flashed before my eyes, I thought for sure he was dead with this invincible mechanic being used against me. I spammed my AA in a dread panic and in 2 seconds it was all over…

…there was a downed thief that lost his nigh invulnerable and un-uncounterable stealth.

I breathed a sigh of relief and AAed the poor thief to death.

L2P.

Uhmm how do you AA something you can’t see? So…The thief decided to eat all your AA then? what?

So…. are you parading the fact that the thief decided to stay in place while in stealth to eat all your AA? What a joke.

Any half decent thief will move away from where the are he is being attacked to avoid damage.

#Flopsomemore

No, it’s called moving and thinking. I just moved around, swung my sword starting from where I knew he went into stealth at and moved in the direction I guessed he would move to get a backstab off on me. Not that hard really.

#L2PNoob

So the thief can move too? Not that hard really.

Yes, the thief can move too and as someone who mains a thief I know that despite being able to move sometimes we just don’t move fast enough or in the wrong direction and eat that damage. The point people are missing is that stealth doesn’t make a thief any less squishy.

The point most are missing is a good thief won’t make these mistakes and won’t leave such a weak counter play option available, which is why AOE or AA spam is not viable or even valuable counter play.

So what you’re saying is good players should be punished for being good at what they do?

Alright because this is going over your head I will try to break this down. Playing a guessing game with thiefs or the stealth mechanic in general is not fun and it does not make someone a better a player, neither does it promote skillful gameplay.

Good players do not make mistakes (to often) like take a face full of auto attacks or not dodging in their refuge when they know AOEs are coming. This has been pretty much common knowledge as a thief to dodge in your refuge and to bait out dodges/cooldowns before you open/burst.

There is no counterplay to stop a thief from doing whatever they want to their target they can call out a target and spike them from 1800 range whenever they want. Whether it is from stealth or just completely out of line of sight.

Shadow.1345:

StickerHappy.8052:

Shadow.1345:

StickerHappy.8052:

Shadow.1345:

I was just in a match and saw I was paired with two other thieves. I didn’t want to be in a Ranked match with 3 thieves so I switched to warrior. My second match as a warrior and being a thief win day there was 2 thieves on the opposing team. Early in I was defending a point and the thief went into stealth. My toon’s life flashed before my eyes, I thought for sure he was dead with this invincible mechanic being used against me. I spammed my AA in a dread panic and in 2 seconds it was all over…

…there was a downed thief that lost his nigh invulnerable and un-uncounterable stealth.

I breathed a sigh of relief and AAed the poor thief to death.

L2P.

Uhmm how do you AA something you can’t see? So…The thief decided to eat all your AA then? what?

So…. are you parading the fact that the thief decided to stay in place while in stealth to eat all your AA? What a joke.

Any half decent thief will move away from where the are he is being attacked to avoid damage.

#Flopsomemore

No, it’s called moving and thinking. I just moved around, swung my sword starting from where I knew he went into stealth at and moved in the direction I guessed he would move to get a backstab off on me. Not that hard really.

#L2PNoob

So the thief can move too? Not that hard really.

Yes, the thief can move too and as someone who mains a thief I know that despite being able to move sometimes we just don’t move fast enough or in the wrong direction and eat that damage. The point people are missing is that stealth doesn’t make a thief any less squishy.

The point most are missing is a good thief won’t make these mistakes and won’t leave such a weak counter play option available, which is why AOE or AA spam is not viable or even valuable counter play.

Spamming AOEs is not legitimate counterplay to thiefs stealth just stop with this. Oh a thief dropped shadow refuge, spam AoE into it. This is literally one scenario that happens to terrible players. You should not use refuge in a manner that is obvious or gets you caught. If you are using the skill directly in the middle of a fight you better be using it to res a teammate and then yes that’s counter play to SHADOW REFUGE and not the entire stealth mechanic.

Another scenario that some people think is a viable active counter play to stealth, interrupts or all forms of cc. This is not true to a thief that already exists in long stealth. For gods sake a thief can stealth himself (completely out of enemy teams line of sight) for 5s switch SB, then still get a decap and then whoever the back point is will not be in range by the time the thief stealths again. If the thief wants to open on them there is no counterplay to that thief opening on them and getting burst and winning a 1v1 against whatever it was.

Why has hardly anyone made any legitimate counter play suggestions? Currently the best way to “actively” counter a thief in stealth is to have good game sense and to have some knowledge of the thief you are fighting and when they are going to open on you.

The reveal on dodge/blind/etc for stealth attacks is fine, but it seems half-baked. Adding something like if they hit a player while blocking a silhouette of the thief is revealed momentarily so the person knows they are there. Because all you really want is to know if they were behind you, or on the left, right, or whatever. I guess it could work for blinds and dodges also, but revealing the thief entirely is leaving them exposed with no way out (depends on weapons) giving the player knowledge of their placement is more than enough to punish them for a mistake.

This is more active counterplay because instead of the thief just plainly be revealed, the player blocking/dodging/etc has to capitalize on them being slightly exposed for a brief period in time. Oh and one more thing I actually play a thief, but it annoys me how there is little to no counter play to a thiefs mobility and stealth openings.

Well most of the nerfs to S/D are because they do not listen to the players. If they would have changed acrobatics in the first place and left Inf. Strike and FS/LS alone it would have been relatively fine. But nah, they go ahead and kept doing the exact opposite of what the feedback was.

I only noticed this for the Thief and Engineer stolen items. The other classes function just the same, with no delay with animation and no skill lockout.

I don’t get it they already tried changing them once 2 years ago, and made the game incredibly glitched for a month, and added on even more unnecessary bugs. If they want to remove something that has been in the game since beta, sure okay. If Anet has to make up for players bad positioning, and lack of communication w/e. It’s only been 3 years why would the playerbase get any better at the game right?

I cannot even think how many times this specific type of ladder progression system was mentioned on these forums. Anyone remember the CDI, about this exact topic? It has nearly been two years since they asked if we wanted something like this, and have yet to even do anything about it, at all.

Honestly, why bother, why even bother posting it again. You know, anet hasn’t listened to a single thing about this, for nearly two years, what is going to change?

Ya know Acandis, whenever you are done giving ideas for this terrible game that will never come to fruition, you can always join TS, and play ArcheAge.

This is the esports that we were promised.

AI vs AI

Passives working with other passives, passives proccing other passives, and having to actively react to said passives. This is the highest echelon of GW2 esports and PvP, you do not even have to be at your computer to play the game, seems like we have already made it.

Thanks for the nice comments I really appreciate it. I have gotten a couple of offers, but I am looking for teams that I know I can work with, and have a great cohesive mesh together with.

Aspirations have changed, desires are relatively the same, I still want dedicated teammates, and hopefully really good/intelligent players to play in the WTS and beyond. My interest to play this game was dwindling so, I could be very negative to play with, not necessarily towards others, but about the game.

Also, I am not looking for people I have to micromanage, or vice versa. It is just not necessary, and a team is about a team’s work, and not one player needing 4 players to tell him where to go, and what to do.

So I guess we have two opinions both which are exceptionally valid in why S/D has such a low skill floor and skill cap.

1. S/D paired with Acro/Feline Grace makes the weapon set extremely forgiving, and easy to play, (the opinion the majority of the playerbase of gw2, just not the developers)

2. S/D (the weapon set) is the core of the problems, and is why thieves are so strong right now.

Honestly the only other opinion I have seen in here was that S/D was high risk, high reward, which is not true even when playing S/D crit. You have evades built into your weapon set, slightly easier access to stealth against good players that can interrupt (heartseeker is much easier to predict than a CnD). Sword 2, and all of its glitches and bugs, and its completely forgiving accessibility to a single target.

There really is not to much credibility here to back anyone up here. It’s not a D/P vs S/D its more Acro is broken, and Anet made a change that added counter play, and the OP just saw it as a nerf. If they made LS 2 boon steal again, it would make it worth trying to earn the LS.

Oh no, they added counter play to a build with still less counter play than most builds in the game. The sky is falling.

EDIT: LOL I just read the title and posted, but now I read these comments. How the hell could S/D be more skill when its literally just keeping your evade frame uptime until your get an air/fire proc. It is the most unskillful pile of worthless crap in this game.

Seriously, just dodging through literally everything spamming or not, (I could care less what you call it its reality) just to get to a target. Let’s not forget sword 2. It requires so much skill to use. Like I can’t even say positioning matters on S/D because you have a heal that has 0 counter play and you can use when immobed, and lets be honest with all those dodges you won’t get stunned because you are so good at the game.

Thief nerfs were fine, I don’t know what you are going on about. They still didn’t really touch the traits that make them over the top, but Choking Gas, and Black Powder are long over due.

Only thing I want to say is do not put music of any kind in this stream or the VODs will be muted for the people who might have missed the live stream.

I think this is a record for a thread lasting this long and not getting deleted.

Chase.8415:

OlrunTheBlade.1486:

Look at the picture. He has 23 matches played. Please explain how that should be at the top of the leaderboards, especially when 8 of those are losses. It would be understandable if he was 23-0, but he’s not.

Because he obviously won against people with a high rating, possibly people in the top 30 or 40. That is how someone can reach the leaderboard with a less than 50% win rate.

Because he won against high rated players that should make him a viable candidate for rank 1? No it should not. This rating/ranking system is terrible, and how players are placed is even worse. This is how every ones matches will go if they don’t lose there first placement matches, they will get an auto rank 1 because this system flawed.

I am not saying it should be perfect, but it definitely should not be this far from it.

I can get past the launcher (sometimes), and get to the character screen, but as soon as the loading screen starts, it takes about 5 minutes and crashes with that error code. I do not know what the issue is. If someone could let me know if it is the the map, (heart of the mists) or anything else that would be great.

Blu, in all honesty I do not even know why anyone has to vote for you to go at all. You are one of the only commentators in GW2 left. If anything ArenaNet, should have just paid for your expenses. Going as a player, I don’t see how you committed yourself to being a better player, and better acquainted, with this games knowledge, generals skills, and mechanics to be a player.

JMadFour.9730:

so being able to swap places with a clone that doesn’t exist anymore is a “defensive part of the skill set”? that really does sound like a bug to me. was the Mesmer meant to swap places with nothing?

because that patch note does not say you can’t switch places with the clone anymore. it says you can’t switch with the clone if the clone is already gone. i.e. the clone has to exist, in order to switch places with it.

I can honestly name several bugs on sword alone for thieves that need to be “fixed”, and are unintentional. In this case (and several others) this bug was in the game since launch, and has remained until today. There are countless bugs in this game, that enhance gameplay, and increase skill caps on certain classes.

This would require to much mechanical skill, I don’t see this happening. Just like allowing rangers to control all of their pets skills.

In your opinion, what should the strengths and weaknesses of each profession be? What’s your profession’s kryptonite?

Thief (sPvP)

Strengths

• High Mobility

• Huge team fight presence(threatening)

• High Spike/Sustain Damage

Weaknesses

• Easy to catch (player skill would come into play)

• CD dependent

Kryptonite

• High sustaining Classes

• Mirrors

• Too much condition damage

masskillerxploit.2165:

Mike.4830:

I sent you my application, I am na , I play warrior and I wanna be the best team thankful for accepting this application

We humbly do not accept your app. We are looking for good players… to carry our dead weight.

Fixed that for you.

Acrobatics is pretty broken, period. There is a very low skill floor which is just like Anet likes it. Feline Grace, the crux of this trait lines imbalance, is evidence enough for me that Anet is okay with builds that require spam, and low skill or none at all.

Unfortunately even if feline grace was nerfed, thieves would be inferior compared to other classes. Their mobility would still be a necessity, but they would seem more like a liability than anything, just like any D/P thief currently.

I honestly hate S/D and S/P so much (because they are boring) that I just use D/P and try to outplay, since that’s all you can do when you use an inferior weapon set against an S/D thief or a D/D ele, or an engi, etc.

I am not disagreeing with the OP’s main point. Thieves are truly ruining this games balance. Mesmers, ele’s and even warriors(before buffs) have been replaced because thieves do everything they do just 100% better.

Scyrka.1356:

Most competitive pvp games (Starcraft, Dota, LoL, etc) are primarily hotjoin matches, and the developers actually take them seriously. I don’t know why Anet, who originally WANTED GW2 to become an Esport, isn’t doing this.

Your comparisons are off base of what hot-joins are. They are more like a CS:GO server where you can join and leave when ever you want with no penalty, and they are very casual. This is how it should remain. The lobby’s is SC2, Dota, and LoL, take time to set up (no that it is hard or anything) the game servers do not run it themselves like in shooter games. specifically the reason that is for GW2 is to make hot joins extremely casual.

I wish these were closer to the new GMs we got on the 15th imho. Abduct and Deadly Paradox is pretty insane also. A refuge stealth that could last for 26 or so seconds? that seems like a lot but you would also need to give up a lot for that. Abduct being able to grapple someone out of position so easily does not seem like it would be a “fun” mechanic to play against, especially every 30s

I do like Deadeye and Show off. Pursuit of Excellence seems like it could be better possibly maybe like Reikou said removing the ICD on it. Personally I think 5s on steal is way to much, just 1 second could be enough considering the majority (in pvp) run sleight of hand and only has a 21.5s cooldown on steal.

Considering how lazily this was “fixed” recently, I do not foresee it being fixed properly, and balanced for skill.

This is the old, old S/D build. It is nothing really new, and it does have much more emphasis on evading. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, because you can just dodge past necro marks, engi bombs, nades, etc.

It can still be good, but the reason Jumper wanted to use S/D S/D was for the sword 2. It had infinite range on shadow return, and if you swapped weapons fast enough, you could used infiltrators strike to port onto a point from 1800 range with both your sword ports. You cannot do this anymore, and it no longer has infinite range. Best option is to just have a SB as a secondary for the poison and for downed cleave.

How about they reworked the initiative system to a more ramp-up system instead of what it is now? So you had to earn you burst, and the system rewarded those players who could ramp-up faster than others, and a lower one for those who couldn’t.

For example, make more skills generate initiative and back stab could deal damage based of the amount of initiative spent. Not sure how many skills could generate initiative, or what skills in general, but I think this could be a better system than what is in place, and would not require an entire class redesign, of skills traits, utilities, etc.

Completely imo, with a system like this thief becomes more punishable, and has much, much more risk but as I said with a higher reward to better players.

Can’t help but agree with what the OP has said here. Thieves are still (after this patch) way to good and in their own little zone.

The amount of reworks needed to be done for this class currently is so high, it would be better off reverting the initiative buff and, toning down trickery some. But I think some here know that anet never fixes their own mistakes, so it’s very possible that neither of these will happen. Instead of waiting forever and an eternity, probably just going to have to deal with it

The solo queue system is broken at the moment also. I can’t even accept my queue right now.

Shaft.4217:

So I’m going to be the first of probably many to complain. I’ll try to keep the criticism constructive, otherwise this would just be a rage filled post.

First of all, the format of this tournament from the start was completely under-planned. You open up a tourney to which the prizes for many of the teams are PVE items worth hours and hours of grinding and other PVE activities. Anyone could have told you dozens (I guess hundreds, actually) of unknown players would enter, particularly those who don’t really participate in sPvP that often. This is great in terms of PvP activity, pretty much exactly what we need to get people interested in PvP in the first place.

However, this PvP tourney is the only event that ANet has organized in a long time, and probably for a long time, directly for competitive PvP. I’ve been waiting for about a year for an opportunity like this, since PAX and since my last real team, LXR. I’ve queued with many PUGs in the last year, consisting of old teammates and in game friends, keeping my skills sharp and trying to keep my interest alive since there has not really been a competitive scene to speak of, and because of this I’ve been unable to put a team of 5 dedicated players together.

Now, upon the announcement of the Tourney of Legends, my friends and I had our interests piqued. This led to Jsu and I formally making a team with dedicated members, when for weeks or months beforehand, we had queued casually with old teammates, unable to find dedicated members for a team or even a reason for us to be motivated to do so. We’ve now been practicing for weeks and discussing strategies, as any competitive gaming team would.

My enjoyment in this game, as well as my personal skill, is probably at its highest point right now, and it’s all thanks to the Tourney of Legends. This was a great attempt by ANet to foster competitive growth in the PvP community, and judging by the hundreds of teams who applied, it seems they reached their goal. Yet, what about the rest of the competitive PvP community?

As far as I can tell, 8 teams (a couple of which I don’t even know, which is ridiculous considering how much I’m online and how many competitive players I know) of competitive PvPers were guaranteed entry to this tournament, yet the reasoning for those teams is indiscernible. There are 8 teams that have been deemed qualified to be guaranteed entry into the ToL, and after that, all teams are treated equally. How can this be fair? Much more than those 40 players have been active in this game, waiting for an opportunity like this, waiting for any kind of revitalization to the competition of this game. Yet, anyone outside of those 40 lucky players gets to be entered into a lottery to see if they are allowed to compete; a group of 5 PVE friends who perhaps decided to enter for the chance of winning prizes worth lots of gold, perhaps with an average of rank 15, is given the same weight as my team, a team of 5 dedicated players who have put thousands of hours into PvP.

I hope that there can be some reconsideration into how this tournament is seeded and has selected its entrants. In my opinion, the best way to seed this tournament would have been by recognizing any names who have previously been active in PvP in any of the team rosters (by which I mean having had competed in a past tournament), ranking those teams accordingly, and then continuing with the rest. I’m sure that would have been more work, but there is no way that more than 20 or so teams (NA) would have members who have competed in tournaments in the past. It’s ridiculous for the last dozen or so of these teams to be totally neglected in terms of seeding, especially when there are 64 teams allowed to enter.

Played with Haley B, last summer practiced with him all the way up to PAX. Really entertaining person/player to play with. I cannot really say more than what he said in his double post. This tournament was extremely poorly seeded. Random selection, instead of going off of leaderboard ranks was poor decision. Even if the leaderboards are very inactive, if would have actually let it more sPvP teams than WvW/PvE teams. After all this is a sPvP tournament.

I feel like this shows how little faith ArenaNet has in their own feature, this tournament would have spiked activity in the leaderboard and Team Arena queues. Not saying all ~1000 players would have been playing but it would have been more than 8 teams and there could have been a more accurate pool to seed teams for a 64 team qualifier.

Still looking.

Justin ODell.9517:

As an altoholic, I feel your pain. I’ll need to take a look at the data tomorrow, find out just how common re-rolling is for PvPers.

I would imagine it would come out to be fairly high.

I have over 1000 hours played on 3 different characters in pvp alone. And I already know there are players with more than that, across with more classes.

Hi,

Schedule : I can basically play whenever at the moment. I am on a good break from my catering job. I wake up at 11am PST (12 noon) and will hop off around 3am PST. As far as days of the week go, I can be free whenever. 5 -6 days of practice or scrim against better teams.1 or 2 days to gather our thoughts and think about practice.

If my (very flexible) schedule needs to tuned so I need to wake up sooner and go to sleeper earlier. I can do this. It is not a problem. I can change my schedule very easily.

Personality: Generally a easy person to deal with. I only give criticism when there is something to criticize. Very vocal in a match, outside a match, not all the time. But still respondent to any chat that might be happening.

My qualities:

• I am a thief. I have been playing thief since the game launched and have grown to know how to play it very well. I am very confident against other thieves, even good thieves. I have over 3500 hours on thief, and 7500 games on thief. This is the class I focus on mostly, and I like to play more than anything.

• Builds I play. I play D/P mostly and have tried a plethora of non-viable or builds that won’t work in a tPvP setting. D/P or, 10/30/0/0/30, is a build I have fiddled with for a while now to get the maximum potential out of. In that of; mobility, damage, and survive.

• Adaptable. I only mention this because of changes that are on the way. If some new trait setup becomes better I will adapt to something like that. I know what my role is for a team. Generally I can could adapt in play a different class by still sticking to the same role (dps roamer).

• Communication. I can be extremely active in terms of in-game communication I said once already, I can be very, very vocal in a match. I just like to get excited sometimes, and I can be loud.

My ego, and how I take Criticism.

Criticism is the big thing for some teams, egos, and some people not having thick skin. I have problems with none of this. I for one do not have that big of an ego because no one knows who I am, how can I. Criticism to me means I am doing something wrong, and I just need to correct it my self, or with the team.

I honestly want some intelligent people here, that know how to follow up, and can stick with a schedule, not necessarily my schedule, but one that would work for everyone. As well, I want people that are very serious about this game, and being competitive in general. Not just acting like they are.

You can reply here, or PM me in game.

Kinjax or In These Days.

The new map is definitely for a new game mode also.

http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/c/3928027

Just look at the video description.

You do realize that this quote is from a thread about CTF? And the hinting she is referring to is not the release of the game modes, or the feature build at all, but what game mode they could be working on.

John Corpening.9847:

Ah ha, you brought me to my next question xantosnightwish, when should balance patches come in relation to the season? If we had our perfect world, how often would balance patches happen and how would that affect the duration of a season? Some people have suggested fairly lengthy seasons which is at odds with more frequent balance patches. If a balance patch comes out should there be a waiting period before the season begins? If so, how long?

I want to say there could be a 3 maybe 4 week pre-season and a off-season that lasts about 2 weeks maybe less. This could be for players to practice the matchmaking before the season completely resets and starts anew. Also would allow the developers to release balance patches if necessary. If the game were in a more balanced state, there would not be a need for constant attention.

With a 8 or even 9 week season period, it allows both the players to reach their goals, and the developers to watch to see what is strong, and what could be not so strong and for balance patches to get in different seasons, only if necessary.

If anything absolutely has to be hot fixed in during the season, I do not see issues with this. Game-breaking bugs, quick fixes, anything that could be a quick fix, because it would be in the middle of the season.

• Runes and Sigils changes, what is too be expected for us?

• New Game Modes, are they ever going to come?

• Personally this game has gotten quite boring, is there finally going to be a competitive incentive that spices up the game?

I do main thief, and I feel PW is incredibly way to rewarding for the low amount of risk you need to put in for the damage.

Changes that would need to be made, just to nerf this skill would hurt the entire class, like nerf initiative, or changing bountiful theft. But, I would rather see PW split into two different skills, and slow the attacks down of PW. This wouldn’t actually directly nerf its damage, but would slow down the rate of which damage could be applied to a stunned, or immobed target.

The stun, once it lands, then you can use the flurry part of the skill. If the stun never lands (if the skill were to be split) you won’t be able to use the flurry part of PW.

When do you feel that Pistol Whip is unbalanced? (scenarios would be great)

A thief running S/P is a nearly unstoppable training machine. If it finds a squishy it is going to keep focusing it (ele/mes) until it begs for peels. And when those peels don’t work, and the ele or mes go down, PW cleave will kill anyone trying to res or, make them back of their teammates downed body. A guardian can’t knock them off because of the evade.With boon steal, the thief and can steal stab, and daze the rez and keep spamming PW.

How does it feel unbalanced compared to other class mechanics?

When you compare it to a skill like Hundred blades, or Blurred Frenzy, both of these skills have high risks. The mesmer is a incredibly glassy class and can be bursted out of blurred frenzy if they don’t have distortion (the same can be done to the thief) . A warrior can have their hundred blades interrupted, and if they go in a warrior knows they are committing to their burst. And the thief has so many outs they never have to commit to anything, just on sword alone.

EDIT: I want to pitch another idea into my post. Increasing the cast time, or giving PW’s stun a more obvious tell. Something that shows the thief is about to use the skill, almost about as flashy as basilisk venom.

This was the last time game modes were brought up by ArenaNet.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Collaborative-Development-Topic-Game-Modes/first

That was 4 months ago.

Pyriall.5027:

EoNxBoNx.9213:

I will agree that the initiative system is broken, is entirely black and white. But there is one sentiment that whenever this argument is brought up, some people always seem to ignore.

Imagine, Heartseeker, with a 5 second cooldown. Sounds terrible to me, lets move on.

Imagine, Shadow Shot with a 5 second cooldown. Sounds awful.

Imagine, Dancing Dagger with a cooldown at all…

Imagine, Headshot with a 3 or 5 second cooldown.

.

What’s so bad with those? I’m being honest here. It sounds awful in comparison to what thieves currently have, but compared to other professions those are still very modest cool downs for the strength of the abilities.

I do like the suggestion of increasing the initiative cost on consecutive use. The question is, does AA reset the using of an ability?

Heartseeker at 50% below is roughly about the same strength as an ele’s lightning strike, with half the range, an execution requirement, and 3/4 cast time.

Headshot is very strong, but when the stun rounding change came in the game, the skill got a lot worse. There is no justification for this skill to have a CD with its current state.

Shadow Shot is maybe arguably the only one I can agree with here. It’s a unblockable blind and good damage. I would want to see some changes to this if cooldowns were implemented.

Dancing dagger is literally the worse skill a thief has in my opinion. A cooldown would either get it buffed to become more of a utility based skill or even more useless.

And the only thing I see wrong with increasing initiative costs consecutively is, IA, or using HS to go for a decap.

I will agree that the initiative system is broken, is entirely black and white. But there is one sentiment that whenever this argument is brought up, some people always seem to ignore.

Imagine, Heartseeker, with a 5 second cooldown. Sounds terrible to me, lets move on.

Imagine, Shadow Shot with a 5 second cooldown. Sounds awful.

Imagine, Dancing Dagger with a cooldown at all…

Imagine, Headshot with a 3 or 5 second cooldown.

Okay I think you see where I am going with this, the thief would need a entire and complete overhaul more than just removing initiative.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet_Use This trait would have to be removed and replaced i.e development time, anet does not have.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Infusion_of_Shadow This trait would have to be removed and replaced i.e development time, anet does not have.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Quick_Recovery This trait would have to be removed and replaced i.e development time, anet does not have.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Kleptomaniac This trait would have to be removed and replaced i.e development time, anet does not have.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Preparedness This trait would have to be removed and replaced i.e development time, anet does not have.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lead_Attacks This trait would have to be removed and replaced i.e development time, anet does not have.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Initial_Strike This trait would have to be removed and replaced i.e development time, anet does not have.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Hastened_Replenishment This trait would have to be removed and replaced i.e development time, anet does not have.

I might have missed some, but I am sure you get the point.

Unfortunately, anything that will change sPvP, won’t be coming until April or May.

S/P is not better than D/P, a well played D/P thief is still better than S/P. Oh and they use the same build…

Split the skill it would make it, functionally, a better skill.

I would say that they should have stopped balancing the game, but that is in the past. Now, what the devs need to do “differently” is make features that give reasons for players that want to play, to keep on playing, or even players that quit to come back and play.

Also there is absolutely no sense of competition because of a ever growing power creep that has only gotten worse since March or April.