Guild Wars 2

Yargesh.4965:

better off asking in the PvP forum.

Done. <3

Greetings, i’m returning since a long break (who isn’t?), i made up my mind and i want to level up a profession to level 80 at least once.
At the moment i’m going for the pvp route, aka stacking 60 tomes of knowledge then levelling up 20-80 immediatly, meanwhile i’ll have all the time to choose a profession.

The reason i’m posting this in the pvp forum is because a question popped up and i’ve been rightfully suggested to ask here.
Quote from the original thread:
“I’ve been playing thief for quite a bunch of hours and there are times i really feel totally useless, for example when i’m facing guardians or condi engis, regardless of the build i choose.
It feels very rock-paper-scissor to me: thieves can’t deal with guardians at all, engineers can only hope to escape from a condi necro, rangers have trouble with mesmers(dem reflects), etc etc.
It feels every profession has a fixed counter regardless of the build.
So question is: is my thought completely wrong? If yes, why? If no, which profession has the least amount of “fixed” counters that can’t be countered with particuliar builds(for example engineer vs condi necro, not even elixir C wouldn’t save you)?”

Since i’m making another thread already, i’d squeeze in another question: which are the professions with the most/least bugged/useless abilities and traits?

Thanks in advance for any reply.

Zackie.8923:

i just saw a thief steal a warrior and did his whirling axe, ( not dagger storm) and he reflected the warriors bow fire field…

wut? since when does whirling axe reflect projectiles?

I believe it’s since a very long time…

Actually it’s a little harder than i thought.
I’ve been playing thief for quite a bunch of hours and there are times i really feel totally useless, for example when i’m facing guardians or condi engis, regardless of the build i choose.

It feels very rock-paper-scissor to me: thieves can’t deal with guardians at all, engineers can only hope to escape from a condi necro, rangers have trouble with mesmers(dem reflects), etc etc.
It feels every profession has a fixed counter regardless of the build.

So question is: is my thought completely wrong? If yes, why? If no, which profession has the least amount of “fixed” counters that can’t be countered with particuliar builds(for example engineer vs condi necro, not even elixir C wouldn’t save you)?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAoa1ksMt0JePNBNhstGR8O83yaFA-T1APwAuVJAg6KEUhAA-w
Free utility slot: either smoke screen, infiltrator’s signet,signet of agility or really anything you like, traps too.
Elite: pick your favourite
Missing trait: either furious retaliation or side strike.

Grimwolf.7163:

I put a lot of thought into it, and I think I’ve thought of a solid solution.
The main problems are that it lacks defense, sustainability and utility.
The reasons for this being that it depends too much on Unload as the sole source of offense, and Unload is too much of a resource hog for this role.
If they buff non-Unload abilities enough to be viable alternatives, it makes D/P and/or P/D overpowered.
If they buff Unload enough to make the set viable single-handedly, it exacerbates the existing problem and makes it a ridiculous one-trick pony spam-fest.

So here’s my idea.
First increase the cast time on Unload, then add a secondary activation to it (a la Shadow Return and such). The increased duration of Unload is important for several reasons.
It will weaken it enough to help balance the addition of the secondary activation.
Draw out activations of Unload, both to reduce down-time spent on condition-based auto-attacks, and reduce the reliance on Initiative traits without making them overpowered.
And finally, to prevent it from allowing too much burst potential with the secondary, and make it that much easier to trigger the secondary (since it would be available while Unload is active).

The secondary could be called something like Reload. It stops the Unload mid-cast, triggers a small evade window during the early portion of the cast, and restores a couple Initiative.
The cast time of Reload would be sizable, and only give back the Initiative when it completes. Something like a 1 second cast with a 1/2 second evade at the start.
This would give a bit of much needed defense (particularly while using Unload, which currently jams up defense and utility further by locking out other abilities), and gives back some Initiative to help with stringing in non-Unload attacks more frequently.
It would also make Unload spamming for offense significantly less boring and more involved.

However that’d require quite an amount of coding involved.
IMO adding endurance when shots hit your target would be an acceptable lazy way of boosting p/p’s survivability.

That’s basically one free evade if you hit all 8 shots.

I’m not an elementalist expert by any means, but imo the profession isn’t really reactive: sure, you are comboing all day long with your rotations (which i don’t like btw), but regardless of your opponent you’re still going to dodge those few big hitters and pop your cantrips when you need them.
Mesmers instead (along with thieves) are really reliant on defending your own based on your opponent’s actions.
Longbow ranger appears? Drop feedback bubble!
Warrior hammers you down? swap to staff and use #2, when he jump on you blink away!
Also, both greatsword and staff are excelent melee range weapons: the gs provides insane burst at close range, while the staff gives you extra boons while adding extra conditions if you’re close enough, plus you benefit more from chaos storm while being melee(also the staff works both as a condition build or a power build).

By the way, give the thief a try or two in the mists, as it fits your criterias too: mostly melee, requires enhanced mobility, reactive defense (blinds and dodges).
The only ranged options are pistol mainhand and shortbow, the first one is almost always used in condition builds (together with a dagger, the build involves going into melee range too) and the shortbow is a super-awesome utility weapon.
On top of that, the weapons sets have the most flexibility as with initiative you could use all the abilities one by one or use the same one twice, three times, etc.
Lastly, their profession mechanic puts you into melee when used, doesn’t it fit so well?

Cream Sauce Pasta.8254:

What I am looking for in a class:
1) Good map mobility – I want to go for map completions so perma-swiftness or at least 25% movement speed would be great.
2) Ability to survive multiple mobs and AoE them down – I have years of Diablo 2 under my belt so I find fun in pulling multiple mobs and AoE’ing them down.
3) Not too high skill floor – I don’t mind learning and improving but if a class requires me to get everything correct down to a microsecond…Well that’s just no fun for me.
4) Self-centric playstyle – By this I mean not having to keep an eye on other characters that isn’t me. If I’m paying a lot of attention, I’d rather it be on my own character rather than have it split among multiple characters.
5) Useful for endgame PvE – I don’t want to be a dead weight to any team. Don’t mind playing support as long as the class is actually great at it.

Thanks in advance!

1) Engis can achieve perma swiftness with 2 trait points (which is early), thieves have movement speed signets and can shadowstep around,eles can provide alot of AoE swiftness with their staff,overall everybody has perma or almost permanent access to swiftness either way. As far as i know mesmer’s the only class that relies on centaur runes for it.

2) Necros, engineers, elementalists, warriors can all clump some mobs together and kill them with AoE. Thieves can survive any encounter in PvE due to their stealth mechanics and shadowsteps.

3) Engineers and elementalists require you to chain your skills together in a timely fashion, so does shatter mesmer.
Thieves a similiar issue: you don’t need to execute combos at all, but you need to time your evades, heals, teleports really well.

4) Warriors and guardians fill the description, but so does the necromancer (except the fact you can corrupt boons, but that’s only one ability and it’s obvious when you need to use it). Mesmers and thieves tend to be the opposite, as you need to dodge, evade, block most of the incoming attacks.

5) Warriors, guardians, mesmers, elementalists are all required in all parts of the game. Thieves are immensely useful in dungeons to skip mobs, engineers can become jacks of all trades. The only profession that doesn’t fit really well in dungeons is the necro because it tends to avoid helping others.

DeceiverX.8361:

Regarding #2, for reasons that exiting the circle at any point before it finishes force reveal effects and doesn’t stealth users. It’d require a lot of extra setup time and coordination for marginal rewards. A lot of groups aren’t actually that skilled or coordinated anyways; most blobs in WvW get carried by the easy-to-play, easy-to-win GWEN strategy and thus prefer veil because it’s easier to pull off, and doesn’t keep people waiting inside of a tight space.

I may be wrong, but if a thief drops SR on himself, heals with hide in shadows and moves away, doesn’t he retain the stealth?
It might be as easy as dropping one SR plus one veil if that’s true (i’ll test it asap).

edit
Just tried a few times, it seems that doesn’t work, i swear it worked a few times tho.
Either way, SR+portal wouldn’t be brutal? xP

Well, SR can be used on top of mesmer’s veil. I believe any commander can coordinate a zerg nice enough to tell everybody to don’t go past the circle.
If we assume everybody thinks/knows that SR is a great tool for zergs and exiting the area will negate its effects, then it’d outperform veil. The reason it doesn’t is simply because it’s not what everybody does, maybe if some commanders call for shadow refuges and see it working things might shift. Still, that’s 4+11 seconds of stealth compared to 4-5.

Regarding the cele gear… wouldn’t it work as a point holder/capper?
Basically, your only job should be holding c.points until your teammates can help and if something goes wrong, just pop sr and casually walk away.

By the way, isn’t pistol/dagger a viable condi build?
I believed it was…

Wyrden.4713:

i love spamming skill 3 on d/p for an unknown reason..

Me too…looks self at mirror

magnus.9583:

Im just kinda stuck about what proffesion i want, because i hate leveling mesmer, necromancer seems to week leveling, and the guardian just not my type… so its a bit hard for me to know what to lvl

Necro’s levelling’s really easy actually.
Either way, you can just make a character, then play sPvP until you have enough tomes. In almost two days (5-6 hours) i’ve got 11 tomes, if you have a scroll of knowledge that’s instant level 31. And you get to try your profession extensively.
Plus if you realize you don’t like it then you can use the tomes on another one, so you aren’t bound to your decision.

magnus.9583:

For the fun of it, getting the experience of the new weapons (other combs of weapons)

Well you could experience those weapons with the level 80 character too.
Either way, i’d prefer to level another profession i don’t have already.
But if you like the thief to the point you want more thieves, then by all means stack ’em up!

alchemyst.2165:

And sometimes…I like to heartseeker spam.

Oh…my…God!
Atrocity!

If you have a thief already, why’d you want to level up another one?

Unload’s shots restore X endurance on hit (5 maybe? compare it to d/p or d/s amount of evasion…).
After a full unload, your next basic attack is empowered/gives you stealth/makes you evade/a combination of those.
No need to implement any difficult code, no mechanics are changed.
Seems reasonable to me.

Greetings, recently i’ve been PvP’ing alot and i have some questions to ask regarding the profession, it’d be great if anybody could answer them!

First: why no cele thief?
I tried a celestial build today (with some generic runes/sigils) and i actually was unkillable! A celestial ele, zerker sword/dagger thief and a zerker scepted guardian tried to kill me for at least two minutes, at that point i couldn’t defend the point anymore and had to sr away.
Of course, hitting 2.7k backstabs did hurt my feelings, but the overall damage wasn’t so bad. Plus nobody excepts a thief to be able to take hits so everybody tries to kill you asap just to discover you don’t go down.
I mean, i’ve always heard people comment how p/p and d/d are weird sets because they are both condition and power focused, so why not cele?

Second: Why not using shadow refuge as a replacement for veil in zerg vs zerg?
While SR has a cap of maximum players stealthed when placed, it doesn’t have the cap with people entering the area after it has been placed.
Thus if one thousand people are clumped in one place, sr is activated and people move inside it, they’ll all be stealthed.

Third: What’s the general opinion on leeching venoms?
It seems it applies when attacking and not when applying the venoms, thus an untraited spider venom should trigger it five times.
As long as we don’t overlap venoms, isn’kitten crapton of healing and extra damage?
Plus, most venoms deal conditions, with the trait they’d deal considerable extra damage too…couldn’t a bunker/celestial build be made out of this?

Confirmed, it’s thief.
The final reason isn’t even related to combat...just...it’s the face asuras do when using unload.
The mini snowman even turned his back to me after discovering this. LOL.

oxtred.7658:

SR has a 5 ( 10?) man cap.

You’d enjoy your thief more based on what you said. Necros and escape don’t go well together.

If people enter after sr has been placed, they still get stealthed.
Just tried it in spvp: popped sr where people spawn, 5-10 got stealthed, i walked in and got stealthed too (same for a random ranger).
It’s a circular veil with less cooldown! :O

oxtred.7658:

Don’t do that Sr thing in tournament please ( it’s just a time loss and everyone with a brain will just throw aoes all over the place until they find you). I personally enjoy thief more in pvp, as it’s more fast paced and agressive. Necros are too slow for me.

Well, respawn time would’ve probably been 15 seconds, i was near the furthest c.point on the map, two opponents lost time attacking me and i managed to res myself…I’d call it a day!
Yeah, i wouldn’t do it in tournaments as they’d just leave one person capping and AoE’ing…but the results were positive this time

Iris Ng.9845:

Necro are good at holding point and in team fight. However, they are usually targeted and the first to die in deathmatch.

Well,the issue is that i’d love to be able to hold my own in fights, but i’d also like to have means to escape if the situation gets too hairy.
Today with my thief i’ve had to run away from many fights that i might’ve won with my necromancer, but i’ve escaped certain death too(then an ally helped me and we took them out <3).

Aside that, my main focus will be solo wvw roam (maybe with a friend or two), pvp and to a lesser extent dungeons…so thief might fit more?
kitten it’s a really hard decision.(by the way, i’d like to stay away from zerg vs zerg encounters as my pc drops to 20-30ish fps when that amount of players are on the screen)

Flipping question: if mesmers are used as veilbots because veil can stealth unlimited amounts of people for 4-5 seconds (or 8-10 if going through it twice)…why aren’t there shadow refuge thieves doing the same?
As far as i know (wiki says the same) SR has no limit to people it can stealth and lasts more too, at the cost of having to stand still for 4 seconds.
I mean, even if somebody only receives the last 2 ticks then it’d be better than veil already. ò.ò

kitten it it’s happening again! (sorry for the double post btw)
I’ve tried my thief again and after a generous amount of matches i actually started to do well (plus dropping shadow refuge just before being downed, waiting for the stealth to tick and then teleporting away is priceless).
So scrap that, it’s thief vs necro now! x)

Iris Ng.9845:

You may want to watch this guy’s stream for reference: http://www.twitch.tv/noscoc

It’s been quite a difficult decision at first, as the mesmer has much more mobility than the necro, has access to stealth, reflection and clones, but i chose the necro.
It’s just too rewarding for me to fear people to death…and if they retaliate with stability i can just not give a kitten and turn that into sweet terror.
It’s also really nice to know that if an engineer meets you, he/she’ll run away as fast as possible.

By the way, theorically, how does any profession (assuming both the players are really skilled) beat a necro assuming there’s no uneven terrain and no way to escape(like how most duels are arranged)?
Cleansing a terrormancer is kind of impossible, if you condi the necro then you get your conditions back with interests, if you buff yourself then everything gets converted to conditions (good thing corrupt boon prioritizes stability last).
All i can think about are abilities like berserker stance which don’t allow conditions to be applied at all…

Iris Ng.9845:

Answer to your issues: Great players practice to become the best of their class.

If you watch the Twitch streaming of some very best players, you can learn about their rotations, reaction in different encounters. I suggest you watch the official GW2 twitch on Sunday, when the ESL Go4GW2 Cup is live. You may find some inspiration to tweak your play style.

I’ve seen thet wo matches of the dec 21 stream, it’s quite hard to understand what they’re doing because the view isn’t centered on them and moves too often (plus they often kept the view in one spot when somebody else was being downed in a different place).
The mesmer was basically a full support member, the thieves’ job was to run around and decap, while eles and engis did the most of the work.
Plus, by the amount of boons i’ve seen going, being a necro would’ve been so powerful in that situation: just corrupt boon an ele and place a well of corruption in the middle of the point, add a dagger #3 and the stomp is served.

Either way, i know a big chunk of the deal is knowing your profession and getting better at it… but it’s not easy for me to know that i’m choosing a class over half it’s potential.

edit

I’ve been playing some more (i have quite a few tomes now…and two full inventories lol).
I’ve put the nail in the coffin with the thief and the engi, so the choice is narrowed down to two professions.
I’ve tried harder with a necro power setup and this time it worked quite nicely (even tho i lost most of my matches due to poor team coordination).

Well…it’s a big improvement isn’kitten It’s lovely to see guardians and eles to melt theirselves, then trying to recover with some stability cantrips/save yourselves shout and turn all those goodies into conditions hehehe.

I’ll update the thread once i do the final decision =)

Either way,i’ve been pvping all morning and here are the results:
Mesmer: did really well with a condi build, did ok with a shatter one.
Thief: did good with a backstab build, terrible with a sword/dagger, fine with a sword/pistol. terrible results with a pistol/dagger condi build.
Necro: Outstanding(!) results with a condi terror build (took down everybody on sight, never died even outnumbered), but absolutely terrible results trying a meta power build (especially infuriating when a stance axe/warrior three-shot me twice in a row)
Engi: meh results with a kit build, terrible ones with a hgh build.

Overall:
favourite builds: condi necro,condi mesmer, backstab d/p thief.
worst builds: power necro,s/d thief,condi thief

Issue: each profession has had builds i loved and hated… how can somebody choose in such an enviroment?!?

Iris Ng.9845:

I’ll try to make it short.

For PVP: You don’t need level 80 characters to enjoy PvP. With reward tracks, you will have enough Tome of Knowledge to level all your characters to 80 in a short time. I suggest trying all four of them in PvP to thoroughly understand their mechanics first.

For WvW: If your home world is truly competitive and requires a presence of level 80 only, then it’s time to think of what play style you want to follow and what role you’d like to fill. Necro is the heavy artillery in Zerg v Zerg, highly valuable for coordinated groups. Engi is a good roaming class with safe options for Zerg v Zerg. Both thief and mesmer have good escape ability and high single target damage. Mesmer will be often asked to become a veil bot. IF it’s not for you then they don’t really contribute much besides picking up strays.

For PvE: A certain individual mesmer has made the class almost godlike in solo high end content. The mesmer brings utilities to the group but it is weak against multiple mob’s pressure. The thief brings blind, stealth and engi brings burst and vuln/might stacking. These three classes are good for their group support. Necro has good DPS, it was underrated not because of its DPS or lacks in support. Its support isn’t half as good as the other speciallized class. Speed run groups don’t pick necro for their speed runs. Average PUG watch speed run videos without a necro and think they are bad. BUT, don’t ever forget that PUG don’t even produce 10% the amount of supports used in speed run records! Necro also has this minion master build which really damages its reputation.

In the end, I suggest you browse through this site: metabattle.com, try all the builds first, then read the guide carefully as you build up your 80.

I have all 8 classes and I think I understand each of them well enough.

To be honest, i didn’t know playing pvp would net me tomes of knowledge…if they’re obtained swiftly enough then goodbye pve lol!
The site looks really helpful, i’ll definetly head off pvp to make up my mind.
=D

Yargesh.4965:

two wildcard/roll over then

Well,i’ve been trying them vs svanir in the mists and…
Thief is really enjoyable, but one mistake instantly got me killed, plus weirdly i’ve been killing my target faster with a bunker engi build than a full zerker backstab.
Plus my backstabs (with zero might, full berserker and flanking traits) were doing no more than 4k damage…wut?
Mesmer has been sweet, i really liked staff/scepter+torch (the new scepter is kinda cool, never tried it before lol)…however power builds didn’t cut it for me: i can’t teleport with my sword#3 if the clone’s dead (ty anet),svanir would kill any melee placed clones before i could summon three to shatter…so…eh…yeah.

Engineer’s been sweet, i tried a 4 kits build and it’s been cool. Unluckily he has too little condi clear and the gadget build i tried sucked as often i’d have all my cooldowns burned.
I’ve had a blast with a condi necro, unluckily any power build i tried (minions,wells,shroud) wasn’t any good.
Maybe i’ll delete my low level ranger (all slots used lol) and give other classes a try again… :s
Too many buts (with one T <3) to choose yet.

By the way, aside going full zerker, what can i do to improve my damage?
I’ve seen burning ticks hitting more than full zerker sword slices(crit) ò.ò

Yargesh.4965:

Roll a die, set 2 numbers per class.

I don’t have a 8 sided dice

Yargesh.4965:

You have 5 free character slots to play with.
As for mesmer condi their focus is more confusion and torment so they are great to pair with necro, ele or thief whose focus is on other conditions. Having something walk itself to death is an interesting thing to see.

Mesmers also inflit lotsa burning with wind of chaos…and bleeding too.
Issue is that glamour builds are IMO too weak to use to apply conditions, plus they require a setup (having illusions up) to apply burning and bleeding. At that point a power build would perform better i think.

I just… don’t know what to choose! I like and dislike them all the same way, it’s frustrating lol!

Added a tldr…also…bumpy flick of justice?

TLDR: thief,engi,mesmer or necro?

I’ve been away quite a few months and i believe i’ve finally decided to level at least one character up to level 80 (yeah, got the game since release and yet didn’t manage to reach level 80, silly me).
However, last time i played thieves were bursting everything down,rangers sucked, mesmers would win almost any duel, a group without guardians wouldn’t be a group…so…checking the forums it seems things have changed quite alot.
I’ve been reading that mesmers are now weak in pvp, that celestial meta happened, that thieves broken to pieces…so i’m questioning my old choices and i’d finally like to put a nail on the coffin.
Since traits are now kind of painful to obtain (and costly), i’ll purely focus on only one character, thus this choice will matter alot.

Now, my most important mode is probably pvp/wvw, but i need to be able to pve decently.
I tend to switch builds and abilities really really often, so it’s a must that i like many of a profession’s abilities, not just a few good ones.
Additionally, i really enjoy low cooldowns (i prefer spamming small magnitude abilities rather than using a few powerful ones rarely), condition damage and being able to sustain multiple opponents’ damage (by either evading, blocking or mitigating it).
Lastly, i usually focus on buffing myself rather than debuffing my opponent.

Taking those points in consideration, here are the classes i probably won’t choose:
Warrior: tried it and thus far i only liked mace/shield+hammer bunker.
Guardian: really don’t like the profession as a whole
Elementalist: the attunement system makes me feel locked, i don’t like many of the traits as many work against each other (attunement ones for example)
Ranger: too many utilities i don’t like, i dislike being forced to have a pet.

Thus, the classes left are thief,engineer,mesmer and necromancer.
It’s tricky because my choice has always been about these four, but in over three years i couldn’t decide yet.

Thief:
+ stealth on demand (it’s something i just love)
+ lotsa evades
+ no cooldowns on weapon skills
+ mobility mobility mobility
- many underused utilities
- needs stealth(for pvp)
- some weapon sets don’t really work (condition and power on the same kit? wut?)
- apparently nerfed alot

Engineer:
+ can do it all
+ has kits, i like kits, kits are good
+ turrets shoot for me! look! without hands!
+ has many “you better leave this area” mechanics, which i really like
- you MUST bring kits with you, at least one. rip utility slots.
- what’s condition removal?
- bursty builds require a combo to be swiftly performed (i prefer to time my big hitters, hi thief!)

Necromancer:
+ eats conditions for breakfast
+ death shroud is kitten: extra health, low cooldown, good abilities stored inside…sign me up!
+ wells and marks fuel my need for area denial
- apparently looked upon in pve
- mobility? ain’t dodge enough? (no)
- reflect? you mean like…mirrors? (no..not at all)
- death shroud is much better vs one target than many (curse you spectral armor and spectral walk! gimmie life force for each attacker!)

Mesmer:
+ i LOVE clones! i’m everywhere!
+ has many dashes, teleports, dodges
+ easy to access stunbreaks and condi clear.
+ can do pretty much everything…
- you require a combo to be performed swiftly with power builds, they also have a clear setup (i mean, you just see a mesmer dodging a few times and throwing you a clone…)
- as far as i know, they don’t bunker well at all
- condition damage seems lackluster on them
- out of combat speed is painful

So, now that i’ve listed why i like/dislike each of the left over profession, i’d be glad if anybody could chime in as i really can’t make up my mind…

Tiny little bump

NinjaEd.3946:

ButterOfDeath.2873:

It basically would make every single ability twice as powerful at player’s whim.
How many traits allow this kind of power to be achieved? All i might think of is ranger’s trait that allows signet to affect them too… and it’ll be made into baseline thus not a big deal.

Technically physical training allows physical skills to deal double damage and recharge quicker and its a master trait. Fresh air allows a full recharge on the attunement which in turn works on respective air attunement swap traits to proc. Ele can also be immune to all conditions above 90% health, ranger can passively remove 3 conditions every 10 seconds. They look OP because no one else really gets those effects but look at the end result of them and see how it actually effects each profession.

Regardless of what it may do, not everyone has to follow the same rules or we’d all just be using auto attacks and relying on passives. Traits are what differentiate us imo the most. There is a lot that goes into a build but traits are what bend the rules and right now, thief has an RNG trait with a % increase on something we cannot do on our own. If there were sub classes I’d say this trait is pretty good but when your own class has a trait granting a bonus towards a non-existent effect what is the point? It’d be like giving 50% poison duration to a guardian or increased vigor duration to a necromancer.

The fact that anet shipped thief out with this trait and 2 years later hasn’t done anything to it saddens me. This on a laundry list of things that have been ignored and not just on thief just is disappointing.

Double damage on utility skills is ok-ish, not that big of a deal tbh.
Fresh air recharges a low cooldown attunement anyway, super useful when built around it but that’s it.
Both ele’s diamond skin and ranger’s 3 condi clears/10 seconds are situational defensive buffs.

The ability to double cast any ability, even in many other games (hi red mages!), would be overpowered.
Plus, it can be used/abused offensively too, while other traits are limited their own ways.

Sifu.6527:

ButterOfDeath.2873:

NinjaEd.3946:

Jayden Ennok.3687:

ButterOfDeath.2873:

Jayden Ennok.3687:

NinjaEd.3946:

A thief enjoying an RNG factor in their build? Who are you?!!

Seriously, how can anyone enjoy the random effect this trait produces? Thief needs quick decisions to pull of their bursts and stay alive, having a 1 in 5 chance to recharge your skill(s) is just awful. There needs to be a purpose to this trait other than “ooh, piece of candy”.

I used to think the same untill I tried the trait. This “piece of candy” is a lot more useful to me than 5% on dagger skills or similar traits, which are just boring. Quick decision making is exactly what Improvisation allows for, since it changes thief’s possibilities right away.

ButterOfDeath.2873:

Now, a 20% chance to reset all utility cooldowns is indeed really powerful, but useless 80% of the time.
Instead, having to build around improvisation will limit what utilities, healing and elite skills you can choose while making utility-specific traits much less useful.

Plus, now that you’ve seen i know what intended means, let me iterate that in much earlier stages of the game the thief would steal a bundle, not an extra ability.
In that enviroment, the trait would’ve been just right, right now not so much.

Thus, this is why i’m proposing possible solutions to make the trait interesting and useful, rather than a really situational trait that requires certain conditions to be met.

I doubt many of those who use this trait actually build around it. You don’t build around each of the traits you use either, just some of them.

If you take illusionary persona on the mesmer, i’m surely going to play shatter.
Sure it’ll improve any build, but i’d gladly build around it.

Apples and oranges.

You could compare more equivalent traits but ofc that wouldn’t help your argument much.

Perhaps thieves need to speed up their decision making skills if they think Improvisation is useless due to rng.

-snip-

The trait must work with all skills, not just the on cooldown ones, as otherwise it’d be terribly overpowered regardless of the ICD you put in.

Why?
suggestion one: reset 50% of one type cooldown out of your skill bar.
Every 20 seconds, halving all cooldowns is too much, be it all deception or all venoms.
Not even a grandmaster trait should allow this.

suggestion two+three: fully reset one skill type out of your skill bar.
Regardless of cooldown, that can be abused insanely hard, such as a super instakill venom build. (all venoms twice applied with two unloads…insane)

Suggestion four+five: double scorpion wire into a zerg…double shadow refuge… double shadowstep… it’s better to avoid i’m afraid.

That said, the skill MUST recharge a random utility or utility+heal skill regardless of cooldown or skill type… OR apply a really high flat cooldown reduction (for example: 40 seconds) to said skill.

That would be the ONLY way to don’t force an ICD (which is BAD!), while having the trait to be balanced.
To be noted is that this way the trait is mostly useful in emergency scenarios, while it’d be almost useless in offensive/upper hand scenarios, where the skill could otherwise be easily abused to chain powerful abilities together.

Please give me an example of how one could easibly abuse improvisation if it recharges one of a slotted utility.

Assuming it recharges one utility skill already on cooldown, it could be abused by using scorpion wire + steal + shadowstep (either the skill or the p/d #3) + scorpion wire against somebody into your zerg. In that situation it’d be an assured instakill.
Or shadow refuge + steal + shadow refuge for ultimate stealth uptime.
Double smoke wall in a zerg vs zerg situation or where many projectiles are flying around.

It basically would make every single ability twice as powerful at player’s whim.
How many traits allow this kind of power to be achieved? All i might think of is ranger’s trait that allows signet to affect them too… and it’ll be made into baseline thus not a big deal.

NinjaEd.3946:

Jayden Ennok.3687:

ButterOfDeath.2873:

Jayden Ennok.3687:

NinjaEd.3946:

A thief enjoying an RNG factor in their build? Who are you?!!

Seriously, how can anyone enjoy the random effect this trait produces? Thief needs quick decisions to pull of their bursts and stay alive, having a 1 in 5 chance to recharge your skill(s) is just awful. There needs to be a purpose to this trait other than “ooh, piece of candy”.

I used to think the same untill I tried the trait. This “piece of candy” is a lot more useful to me than 5% on dagger skills or similar traits, which are just boring. Quick decision making is exactly what Improvisation allows for, since it changes thief’s possibilities right away.

ButterOfDeath.2873:

Now, a 20% chance to reset all utility cooldowns is indeed really powerful, but useless 80% of the time.
Instead, having to build around improvisation will limit what utilities, healing and elite skills you can choose while making utility-specific traits much less useful.

Plus, now that you’ve seen i know what intended means, let me iterate that in much earlier stages of the game the thief would steal a bundle, not an extra ability.
In that enviroment, the trait would’ve been just right, right now not so much.

Thus, this is why i’m proposing possible solutions to make the trait interesting and useful, rather than a really situational trait that requires certain conditions to be met.

I doubt many of those who use this trait actually build around it. You don’t build around each of the traits you use either, just some of them.

If you take illusionary persona on the mesmer, i’m surely going to play shatter.
Sure it’ll improve any build, but i’d gladly build around it.

Apples and oranges.

You could compare more equivalent traits but ofc that wouldn’t help your argument much.

Perhaps thieves need to speed up their decision making skills if they think Improvisation is useless due to rng.

-snip-

The trait must work with all skills, not just the on cooldown ones, as otherwise it’d be terribly overpowered regardless of the ICD you put in.

Why?
suggestion one: reset 50% of one type cooldown out of your skill bar.
Every 20 seconds, halving all cooldowns is too much, be it all deception or all venoms.
Not even a grandmaster trait should allow this.

suggestion two+three: fully reset one skill type out of your skill bar.
Regardless of cooldown, that can be abused insanely hard, such as a super instakill venom build. (all venoms twice applied with two unloads…insane)

Suggestion four+five: double scorpion wire into a zerg…double shadow refuge… double shadowstep… it’s better to avoid i’m afraid.

That said, the skill MUST recharge a random utility or utility+heal skill regardless of cooldown or skill type… OR apply a really high flat cooldown reduction (for example: 40 seconds) to said skill.

That would be the ONLY way to don’t force an ICD (which is BAD!), while having the trait to be balanced.
To be noted is that this way the trait is mostly useful in emergency scenarios, while it’d be almost useless in offensive/upper hand scenarios, where the skill could otherwise be easily abused to chain powerful abilities together.

Jayden Ennok.3687:

ButterOfDeath.2873:

Jayden Ennok.3687:

NinjaEd.3946:

A thief enjoying an RNG factor in their build? Who are you?!!

Seriously, how can anyone enjoy the random effect this trait produces? Thief needs quick decisions to pull of their bursts and stay alive, having a 1 in 5 chance to recharge your skill(s) is just awful. There needs to be a purpose to this trait other than “ooh, piece of candy”.

I used to think the same untill I tried the trait. This “piece of candy” is a lot more useful to me than 5% on dagger skills or similar traits, which are just boring. Quick decision making is exactly what Improvisation allows for, since it changes thief’s possibilities right away.

ButterOfDeath.2873:

Now, a 20% chance to reset all utility cooldowns is indeed really powerful, but useless 80% of the time.
Instead, having to build around improvisation will limit what utilities, healing and elite skills you can choose while making utility-specific traits much less useful.

Plus, now that you’ve seen i know what intended means, let me iterate that in much earlier stages of the game the thief would steal a bundle, not an extra ability.
In that enviroment, the trait would’ve been just right, right now not so much.

Thus, this is why i’m proposing possible solutions to make the trait interesting and useful, rather than a really situational trait that requires certain conditions to be met.

I doubt many of those who use this trait actually build around it. You don’t build around each of the traits you use either, just some of them.

If you take illusionary persona on the mesmer, i’m surely going to play shatter.
Sure it’ll improve any build, but i’d gladly build around it.

Apples and oranges.

You could compare more equivalent traits but ofc that wouldn’t help your argument much.

Perhaps thieves need to speed up their decision making skills if they think Improvisation is useless due to rng.

If the trait resets nothing, you don’t need decision making skills at all.
Plus, assuming my suggestion would be the actual trait, you’re guaranteed a random reset on any build as long as all abilities are on cooldown, thus it wouldn’t reduce decision making skills, but rather it’d lower the chances the skill turns out to be useless or a complete win.

Let me iterate: i’m not any sad about the rng, however in the actual design you risk resetting nothing even when every ability is on cooldown unless you build around it.

And aside the reset, it’s still a “just boring” skill that improves a mechanic thieves don’t have access to alone; or in combination with all but two professions.
Thus unless it resets your cooldowns, it’s a boring, more useless trait than the already boring +5% dagger and co. kind of traits.

Ok, so… did the tests somehow…
coretemp would make my pc freeze forcing me to hard reset, when it worked for a few seconds all cores displayed <31°c so i don’t think the temperature is causing trouble.
In the cpu-z window nothing seemed to change except the frequency that bumped to 3.5k ghz when starting the game.
In the windows manager tab, all cpu cores were at about 86-90% usage (during the low fps).
As for gpu-z… the pcid is listed nowhere ò.ò… tho the utilization was at about 90% too,never dropping. Temperature at less than 50°.

shrugs a little

Dakota.4591:

Thief has a spammable blast finisher that’s of little to no combat application. But when combined with another class, it becomes incredibly powerful because we can stack a lot of might in short order.

As much as I would love to see this trait give a 10% damage boost on steal attacks, I’m fine with having a trait that benefits from a little synergy with other classes. I’ll run it if I’m grouped with an ele, but when not, I just don’t use it.

Difference is the same skill is both useful alone and can still be combo’ed with thief abilities, such as shadow refuge or smoke screen for example.
Plus i believe keeping the blast finisher increases the direct damage and saves one initiative (might be wrong about the direct damage tho, didn’t check).
However, the only way to combo the bundle bonus is with an elementalist or warrior or one of the rare enviromental weapons. On the other hand, a blast finisher can combo with every class.

sirsquishy.8531:

ButterOfDeath.2873:

Rebooted, tried aaaand… zero improvements.

So sad.

Ok you need to tear this down to the hardware to find out what the bottle neck is, then form there make the proper adjustments.

Starting with the CPU, load up Coretemp, CPu-Z, and open Task manager while GW2 is running (windowed-full screen mode preferred). What we are looking for here is the highest hit on any one core when you are getting your 60fps vs when you get a serious drop. If the CPU is bottle necking you should see one of your cores/HT’s jump up higher then the rest and stay there for the duration of the low FPS spike.

CoreTemp is for making sure your CPU isn’t just throttling. As GW2 is very CPU heavy, if your CPU cooler is weak that could be the cause here. 4690K’s throttle at 100C’, Though I have seen them slow down gw2 at around 89C’s.

Next, your GPU. Load GPU-Z and MSI Afterburner. Use GPU-Z to verify your PCIE link speeds (should be 16x version 3). Once verified switch to GPU-Z’s Sensor tab, and compare that with MSI Afterburner for Core and Memory Clocks while GW2 is running (same as above, looking for 60FPS vs 20-30FPS), does your GPU’s temp hit 80c’s+, does the Core Drop down to 300/600mhz, does the utilization stay at or near 60-100%, or does it cycle from 0% to 100% and back to 0%…rinse and repeat?

Most of the issues I am pointing out are all HW and Driver issues.

But if you are still bottlenecking with the utlities showing no issues, then you need to adjuste your ingame settings. Namely the horrendous Reflections option. Even with my system (4790K and 280x) I cannot run with Reflections on Full. I have to put them on Terrain and sky only. Else I see similar things to you. But I can run the rest of my settings on max (FXAA disabled) and have no real issues.

I’ll try that as soon as i can, as for the cooling…i bet it’d have no trouble. (this is why: http://images.bit-tech.net/content_images/2011/04/be-quiet-dark-rock-pro-review/darkrockpro-2b.jpg)
I already tried to turn down reflections from full to terrain and sky to none.
Between full and terrain&sky only, the difference is 15 fps.
Between t&s and none i see no difference instead.

Btw, even without having run the tests yet, i find it hard to believe either the cpu or gpu are the issue as they’re both an absolute overkill for the game, run other heavy games (like lichdom) with ease and the drivers have been updated two days ago to latest version.
Of course it could be, but that’d be so weird. ò.ò

Rebooted, tried aaaand… zero improvements.

So sad.

loseridoit.2756:

you guys can try and force enable large pages on your game to see if it helps

http://www.auraxian.net/index.php?topic=29011.0

I’m back, just did the edit.
Later i’ll reboot and check how it performs.

oxtred.7658:

It’s a pve trait. A powerful one, as well.

Ok, but the passive has no synergy with any combination of thief’s own abilities, while the reset is either too unreliable or requires an unrealistic build. :/

Jayden Ennok.3687:

NinjaEd.3946:

A thief enjoying an RNG factor in their build? Who are you?!!

Seriously, how can anyone enjoy the random effect this trait produces? Thief needs quick decisions to pull of their bursts and stay alive, having a 1 in 5 chance to recharge your skill(s) is just awful. There needs to be a purpose to this trait other than “ooh, piece of candy”.

I used to think the same untill I tried the trait. This “piece of candy” is a lot more useful to me than 5% on dagger skills or similar traits, which are just boring. Quick decision making is exactly what Improvisation allows for, since it changes thief’s possibilities right away.

ButterOfDeath.2873:

Now, a 20% chance to reset all utility cooldowns is indeed really powerful, but useless 80% of the time.
Instead, having to build around improvisation will limit what utilities, healing and elite skills you can choose while making utility-specific traits much less useful.

Plus, now that you’ve seen i know what intended means, let me iterate that in much earlier stages of the game the thief would steal a bundle, not an extra ability.
In that enviroment, the trait would’ve been just right, right now not so much.

Thus, this is why i’m proposing possible solutions to make the trait interesting and useful, rather than a really situational trait that requires certain conditions to be met.

I doubt many of those who use this trait actually build around it. You don’t build around each of the traits you use either, just some of them.

If you take illusionary persona on the mesmer, i’m surely going to play shatter.
Sure it’ll improve any build, but i’d gladly build around it.

NinjaEd.3946:

ButterOfDeath.2873:

NinjaEd.3946:

Jayden Ennok.3687:

As much as I’d like to see the dmg bonus apply on stolen items, the trait is pretty good even without it. For me, it’s like something I don’t notice when it doesn’t proc and notice it when it saves me from certain death. And somehow I like the rng side of it too.

A thief enjoying an RNG factor in their build? Who are you?!!

Seriously, how can anyone enjoy the random effect this trait produces? Thief needs quick decisions to pull of their bursts and stay alive, having a 1 in 5 chance to recharge your skill(s) is just awful. There needs to be a purpose to this trait other than “ooh, piece of candy”.

Maybe instead of skill type recharged on steal it just recharged 1 utility skill that is currently on cooldown, meaning if you only had 1 on cooldown you could use it again to atleast give some decision making back in the thief’s hands. There’s your mix of rng and choice in one package.

I still think it would require a change to the “bundle damage” because why on earth did they give bundle damage to a class that has zero bundles. Spec for that ele to hopefully drop you a conjure? No, it shouldn’t be so ridiculous like back fighting. I don’t know any other trait so out of place where it literally has nothing to do with the profession. Give some bonus depending on the type of stolen item you hold onto like

-Defensive items (consume ecto, feathers, healing spring) give you 10% movement speed

-Offensive items (whirling axe, bone crack, rifle, throw X, etc) give you 5% bonus damage.

Naturally using the item removes the effect or not having an item means no effect.

Resetting one ability already on cooldown would be extremely overpowered.
Throw in a shadow refuge, steal, throw another one, repeat for perma stealth.
Plus that’d be preparation not improvisation.

Then again, add an ICD so that trickery spec’ed thieves cannot repeat this every 21 seconds. It ain’t hard to figure out how to balance low cooldowns. I’m well aware of the potential abuse an on demand reset button does, steal is a rather hard ability to counter on its own and giving them full control over utility cooldowns is a lot.

Also why are we still going off the definition of a trait as if logic applies in this game?
-Inspiring Battle Standard warrior trait: works on all banners, not just the elite.
-mug thief trait: where is my loot?
-furious retaliation thief trait: this is when you hit them below 50% not them hitting you, so where is the retaliation part coming from?
-hard to catch thief trait: doesn’t really make you hard to catch :/
-merciful ambush thief trait: has no relation to an ambush.

I could look for more if you’d like.

A banner can also be called standard, when used in battle, it’s a battle standard.
Consider every banner has the “plant standard” skill.
Health is mug’s loot
We could say the fight itself is the retaliation part.
It does but not well…harder to catch?
How would you call it if not ambush? Merciful revive? Merciful apply stealth? x)

Still, trait names don’t HAVE to make sense, but it’d be very welcome if they do.
So instead of proposing broken names/ideas combinations, they could work together no?

Also, even with a long ICD of 90 seconds, it’s too powerful to have a guaranteed reset of whichever skill you need.

To be balanced, the ability itself MUST be weak offensively, as when being offensive you have cooldowns to burst, otherwise you’re playing safer.
Imagine being double scorpion wire’d inside a zerg (scorpion wire > reset >shadowstep behind > scorpion wire) or throwing two shadow refuges at once.

Unless it’s random, no ICD can balance it IMO…plus i like the idea of having a random reset on demand rather than a more powerful one when i might not need it.

P.s. MANY thieves use steal really early when fighting, that’d be a really big downside with the trait as it’d proc the ICD. :s

Narcarsis.5739:

ButterOfDeath.2873:

I never said it’s broken, i just said it’s completely useless for a thief as the class has no bundles by itself.
Also, on a much earlier iteration of the game, back in alpha, the steal skill worked as a bundle (just look at the thief steal video in the class page) thus the trait is NOT working as intended anymore, it’s just terribly outdated.

You don’t know what working as intended means, so I’m not going to waste my time. On a side note Improvisation is one of the strongest traits in the game.

Cheers,

Caed

The trait lists a bonus damage wielding a bundle, and the damage is indeed applied. Thus it is working as intended. I never said otherwise.

Issue is, the thief alone has access to zero bundles at its current state, thus unless you’re wielding a warrior’s banner, an elementalist’s conjure or one of the few enviromental weapons, the bonus isn’t applied. As intended.

Now, a 20% chance to reset all utility cooldowns is indeed really powerful, but useless 80% of the time.
Instead, having to build around improvisation will limit what utilities, healing and elite skills you can choose while making utility-specific traits much less useful.

Plus, now that you’ve seen i know what intended means, let me iterate that in much earlier stages of the game the thief would steal a bundle, not an extra ability.
In that enviroment, the trait would’ve been just right, right now not so much.

Thus, this is why i’m proposing possible solutions to make the trait interesting and useful, rather than a really situational trait that requires certain conditions to be met.

Azawrath.7304:

A suggestion could be that stealing would decrease one of your utility skills that is on CD by 10 seconds and an additional 10 seconds per additional utility skill you have on CD. So if all of your utilities are on CD and you steal one of the will be recharged while only have 1 utility on CD will not fully recharge it. It could allow thieves to use steal in more creative ways.

I like the idea,but i think it’d be too good.
At the moment, thieves use utilities as a way to save their patootie whenever they need, having the skill reducing the cooldown of your most needed utility by 10 seconds (which is ALOT) every 20 seconds is too much…you could almost double cast scorpion wire or destroying shadowstep’s cooldown against condition opponents.
In that case, it’d be no more improvisation but preparation instead.
In case you ment the trait would reset a random utility not just the cooldown ones, then you aren’t guaranteed a recharge even when all skills are used, which is bad.

NinjaEd.3946:

Jayden Ennok.3687:

As much as I’d like to see the dmg bonus apply on stolen items, the trait is pretty good even without it. For me, it’s like something I don’t notice when it doesn’t proc and notice it when it saves me from certain death. And somehow I like the rng side of it too.

A thief enjoying an RNG factor in their build? Who are you?!!

Seriously, how can anyone enjoy the random effect this trait produces? Thief needs quick decisions to pull of their bursts and stay alive, having a 1 in 5 chance to recharge your skill(s) is just awful. There needs to be a purpose to this trait other than “ooh, piece of candy”.

Maybe instead of skill type recharged on steal it just recharged 1 utility skill that is currently on cooldown, meaning if you only had 1 on cooldown you could use it again to atleast give some decision making back in the thief’s hands. There’s your mix of rng and choice in one package.

I still think it would require a change to the “bundle damage” because why on earth did they give bundle damage to a class that has zero bundles. Spec for that ele to hopefully drop you a conjure? No, it shouldn’t be so ridiculous like back fighting. I don’t know any other trait so out of place where it literally has nothing to do with the profession. Give some bonus depending on the type of stolen item you hold onto like

-Defensive items (consume ecto, feathers, healing spring) give you 10% movement speed

-Offensive items (whirling axe, bone crack, rifle, throw X, etc) give you 5% bonus damage.

Naturally using the item removes the effect or not having an item means no effect.

Resetting one ability already on cooldown would be extremely overpowered.
Throw in a shadow refuge, steal, throw another one, repeat for perma stealth.
Plus that’d be preparation not improvisation.

The trait isn’t broken. “Bundles” refer to things such as Ice Bow, Fiery Greatsword, Lightning Hammer, etc. It works as intended.

I never said it’s broken, i just said it’s completely useless for a thief as the class has no bundles by itself.
Also, on a much earlier iteration of the game, back in alpha, the steal skill worked as a bundle (just look at the thief steal video in the class page) thus the trait is NOT working as intended anymore, it’s just terribly outdated.

Dakota.4591:

The randomness of it pretty much precludes the need for nerfing it. Sure, you could load up on venoms, but you only have a 1 in 4 chance of having the steal reset the venoms. Sure it’s strong, but the randomness helps minimize.
Or you could go with a trick, a deception, and a signet, and have improvisation only reset one of them, with a 1 in 4 chance it won’t reset any of them. Again, the randomness keeps it being from that OP.

Besides, pretty much no one uses it for the skill reset, they use it for the 10% bonus on FGS or Ice Bow.

I’m indeed not asking for a nerf, but for a rework.
Nobody will ever run such a silly combination of abilities just to make the reset work, so instead let’s just make it reset one random utility skill or the healing skill.
Which means, it always resets one skill, but it always does regardless of your build.

And the passive is indeed useless as you need somebody to provide a bundle.

muslumgurseks.4951:

You should OC your cpu and check whether or not it changes anything since CPU is the limiting factor in these types of engines.

Ps: Assuming you have an after market cooler since you bought a devil’s canyon cpu. if you dont have one dont go past 4.2

At the moment i’d gladly avoid to OC my cpu as i’m not experienced at all.

The cooler is a be quiet! dark rock 3, it literally throws chill air out of the case at the moment.

Yet, i don’t really think it’s the cpu, as my older pc has a weaker one and yet runs just as good (or even a little better) when stressed. :s

NinjaEd.3946:

ButterOfDeath.2873:

NinjaEd.3946:

Swap places with residual venom, (make improvisation GM), change it to guartuntee 1 utility skill type on cooldown will recharge (which would cross over to healing and elite skills.

Reason I say it should move up to GM is because its pretty kitten powerful getting a 2nd cast especially if you run all 1 skill type like deception or venoms. Residual venom is also pretty weak :/

Overpowered, that’d allow a full deception thief (aka: everybody nowdays) to reset all his/her cooldowns every 20 seconds.
That alone with shadow refuge is almost perma stealth.
Plus it’d not be improvisation anymore if you know what you’ll reset!

Simple fix, ICD 90 seconds. Also swap the % dmg bonus with bundle to something relating to the stolen item, like movement speed or that 5% while you have a stolen item. This way the 2nd part effects you the entire time and the OP skill recharge is not used so quickly.

I’d rather prefer a less reliable but quicker cooldown reset rather than a long cooldown powerful reset.

Additionally, resetting one ability is an effect that resembles greatly the name “improvisation” as you have to deal with what you get.
However, even if once in a while, knowing what you will recharge also defeats the purpose of the trait itself.

As for the passive boost, my opinion is that the suggested fix would already be enough to be honest.
Otherwise, it could be worthy to actually think about a more active kind of buff rather than a passive one.
For example, activating stolen skills could make you evade for half a second.
Or your next attack causes either cripple, chill or a short duration daze.
Or you could cure a random damaging condition, as the thief has little condition removal.
Heck, you could even shadowstep to a nearby spot within’ 400 radius either after a little delay or when being hit.

Something not necessarily useful but always not negative would be the perfect effect.

muslumgurseks.4951:

Yea that kinda spooky things happen, game tends to favor older GPUs. I remember people whining about going from 5xxx-6xxx series of radeon cards to 7xxx which were the latest gen and having poor performance. Got better in time if im not mistaken. Also have you OCed your cpu? And what’s your ~GPU utilization (290x) in LA? and what resolution are you playing on.

Both my gpu and cpu are factory default, i’m playing on a 1920×1080 resolution.

NinjaEd.3946:

Swap places with residual venom, (make improvisation GM), change it to guartuntee 1 utility skill type on cooldown will recharge (which would cross over to healing and elite skills.

Reason I say it should move up to GM is because its pretty kitten powerful getting a 2nd cast especially if you run all 1 skill type like deception or venoms. Residual venom is also pretty weak :/

Overpowered, that’d allow a full deception thief (aka: everybody nowdays) to reset all his/her cooldowns every 20 seconds.
That alone with shadow refuge is almost perma stealth.
Plus it’d not be improvisation anymore if you know what you’ll reset!