Guild Wars 2

This is regarding adding a cast time to Infiltrator’s Strike.

Dear Developers:

Most S/D builds rely on vigor and evades to induce damage and mitigate the amount of damage received due to our inherent non-tanky nature. I understand that it does not make sense for a skill to be used while under a stunned state. This is what the current change will do:

• Penalize those players who are not stunned before using IR.
• Reduce our effectiveness of clearing conditions.
• Reduce our survivability
• Increase the cost for using the skill without an equal offset or balance.

If the cast time is a must to keep us from porting while stunned and from being able to chain IS/IR with utility skills and steal to teleport stomp, perhaps the following will help balance the added cast time:

• Increasing the immobilize duration on Infiltrator’s Strike (IS). All but two main-hand weapon skills across all classes have 2s or more immobilize duration. One of those two is Infiltrator’s Strike.
• Increase the amount of conditions cleared upon using IR. As it stands now, condition clearing is very costly for a S/X thief who is not traited for Shadow Arts. Condition bursts seem to be trending and we have no way counter.
• Cutting back on the reduction to vigor. I see that you have decided that your initial quote was too much, but I still think that 6s and 10s from our trait lines is a bit much. I think 7.5s and 12s would be decent in-between.

As a general comment, having high evasion is what separates thieves from other classes that have higher health pools. Using IS/IR to launch an attack is a way for us to lay down some damage before we are stunlocked, dazed, and knocked down by warriors to death.

Thank you for allowing us to comment on and give our objective view points to the upcoming changes.

Overall
I am glad to see that there are changes being made to how thieves are stacking stealth and how our base initiative regeneration has been increased to help offset the removal of the amount of initiative regeneration from trait lines.

Regarding S/X Mobility
I understand that I shouldn’t be able to port using skill #2 infiltrator’s return (shadow return) if I am stunned since it is not a stun breaker. However, if there is going to be a cast time added on, there should be a balance put in place on initial infiltrator’s strike (IS). I suggest increasing the immobilize duration on IS so that a thief who has not been stunned is not affected as greatly by this change. Before a thief was essentially given an “oh crap” button when they tried to jump into a fight and were immediately stunned. Now, a thief who does the same thing and is not stunned is being punished. I think this will help offset the cast time. In saying that, I don’t think there should be a cast time at all; just make it so the skill can’t be used if stunned.

I saw a comment made on this thread, or another, about teleport stomping with IR/IS using skill #2 as a justification for making this change. I have never been able to do this with s/x equipped. This is only possible using the utility skill Shadowstep/Shadowreturn.

Critical Strikes – Opportunist
Honestly, I never even noticed this minor trait before. While the increase to a 50% chance is nice, I think an increase to kitten cooldown may be a bit much if someone has invested a full 30 points into the CS trait line. Maybe reduce it to a 3s cooldown if a full 30 is invested into Critical Strikes, or possible keep it at 1s, but no more than 3 initiative can be restored every 9 seconds.

Thank you for allowing feedback from the community regarding these upcoming changes.