(edited by lazyhobo.5423)
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I find the initiative changes problematic for the thief, so yes you get 2.5 more initiative within a 10 second period, with the current Quick Recovery trait its 2 and with signet is 3, so mathematically it checks out, however what this doesn’t account for is burst initiative.
The trait and the signet, you get 3 initiative immediately after you spent those then another 3 initiative after those 10 seconds.
The Opportunist trait took a big hit as you may have 50% chance to get 1 initiative however this is put into cool down 5 seconds, compared to the old where it may be 30% but its put into cool down for 1 second, with some attacks you are sometimes capable of getting 2 attacks in that second ( or 3 in 2 seconds) just to gain that initiative back, so you can potentially gain more.
Finally the signet initiative gains being brought down to one, its’ another but I would say it’s a small bite, because its not worth much, losing power for 36 seconds, every other signet for 24seconds including the 1 initiative gain per second means 3 initiative max, is it worth it? I would say no unless that extra will down or kill your target.
So in conclusion, builds that are not stealth stabbing will still need those traits to continue to function.
Now for survivability of a thief, I totally agree you should not be able to mindlessly dodge through everything, however halving the vigor buff time is quite huge on its own, and the attempts to make up for it aren’t significant enough to make up for it, with thieves having so few options to invest in just to survive.
Compared to a DPS Guardian and DPS Elementalist, I find thief lesser than these two, as thieves have little access to self buff defensive skills.
So constant fighting to survive, that’s fine I can live with that, however the assassin’s reward as three problems: it has a very low base heal, it scales terribly with healing power and it would be a grandmaster requirement. It would mean sacrificing 5 more trait points or (10/15 if you even opt for this), before I found it acceptable because you can opt for the Fluid strikes trait (10% damage while endurance not full), now to get it means sacrificing more damage or something useful just for a low heal compared to a guardian passive or warrior heal, which are constant to the thieves skill healing.
What I can think of for a “constant fighting” thief, is giving it someway to stand in a fight without stealth, only thing it has is Flanking Strike from sword and maybe Black Powder from pistol, but they’re both expensive and short lived. Practiced Tolerance +2% is ok, but it’s too little to help, Hard to Catch doesn’t break any CCs, perhaps raising base healing of signet of malice and assassin’s reward will help or even the base hp of the thief or some new skills.
In the end, with initiative gains being theoretically lowered and the naturally low effective hp of a thief, the only place it has in a party is single target DPS, and even then it may become less effective in that field as well.