Why does swapping weapons for thieves have 10s CD like other profession when it does not give a new initiative bar?

[FrancisN.9276]

Other professions have separate CD for different weapons equipped, so when they swap weapons, they have a full arsenal of skills ready to use. In those cases, 10s CD on weapon swapping makes sense. However, thieves do not get a separate initiative bar to use for a swapped weapon, then why do we have to suffer the same 10s CD weapon swapping penalty?

[ZeroTheRuler.7415]

1 hour ago, FrancisN.9276 said:

Other professions have separate CD for different weapons equipped, so when they swap weapons, they have a full arsenal of skills ready to use. In those cases, 10s CD on weapon swapping makes sense. However, thieves do not get a separate initiative bar to use for a swapped weapon, then why do we have to suffer the same 10s CD weapon swapping penalty?

Some sigils give bonuses on weapon swap so I guess that probably is why. Imagine sigil of Cleansing or the ones that give might/swiftness/endurance.... it would make things broken. Actually on closer inspection... sigils all have a 9s cooldown so nevermind!

 

Maybe its because they don't want skill 5 shortbow to be used right after a series of attacks. It might get kind of busted in PvP. 

 

I 100% agree though. We don't get fresh cooldowns like other classes do on weapon swap if our initiative is at 0 when swapping. It might lead to even more spam heavy rotations for thief, including damage nerfs on weapons if initiative was reset on swap though (which would suck).

 

At a minimum it would be nice if it was reduced by 50% to 4.5s for regular weapon swap... shroud probably would need to stay where it was.

Edit: it would make counting for quick pockets a little more annoying though >_<.

Edited July 13, 2023 by ZeroTheRuler.7415

[TheThief.8475]

I don't really understand this tbh. I'd rather have super low CD on weapon swap, or initiative goin up when you swap weapon  (maybe recover half initiative without the need for a trait). What's fun about swapping weapon in the middle of the action only to find yourself waiting for initiative to recover?

Another of the many problems that Thief design have in GW2 tbh 😞 

[FrancisN.9276]

18 hours ago, ZeroTheRuler.7415 said:

At a minimum it would be nice if it was reduced by 50% to 4.5s for regular weapon swap... shroud probably would need to stay where it was.

7 hours ago, TheThief.8475 said:

I don't really understand this tbh. I'd rather have super low CD on weapon swap, or initiative goin up when you swap weapon  (maybe recover half initiative without the need for a trait). What's fun about swapping weapon in the middle of the action only to find yourself waiting for initiative to recover?

Another of the many problems that Thief design have in GW2 tbh 😞 

 

I agree with you both on this. It makes more sense in terms of balancing if the CD on weapon swapping for thieves get removed or reduced.

[DeceiverX.8361]

Because it'd be ludicrously OP?

Take your favorite kit.

Now replace its bad skills with either all the utility from S/D or D/P, or all the damage from D/D or Staff.

Also Quick Pockets basically has the opposite effect where it essentially refreshes a skill cooldown of your choice after swapping.

And as for why they don't initiative bars back on swap, well, it's because the skills worth spamming on thief are high initiative and are worth spamming on thief for good reason.

Imagine how stupidly overpowered six consecutive Shadow Shots, Vaults, FS/LS combos, IStrike immob spams, etc. would be.

 

 

[bq pd.2148]

7 hours ago, DeceiverX.8361 said:

Imagine how stupidly overpowered six consecutive Shadow Shots, Vaults, FS/LS combos, IStrike immob spams, etc. would be.

if another profession swaps to the same weapon the cooldowns remain, thus the initative would have to be based on how many weapons you change with the swap: weapons from 0 hands, 1 hand or 2 hands.

more ini overall would maybe give the devs some room to change m7 ini spam and thus make it easier to balance the weapons across the specs with the coming changes.

[draxynnic.3719]

Because the main idea with weapon swap is to allow you to switch functionality, not simply to maximise damage by leveraging cooldowns from two weapon sets. Thief, if anything, gets more out of weaponswap since thieves can usually maximise DPS with just one weaponset, allowing them to use the other weaponset for adaptability (range versus melee, CC, mobility, etc) rather than taking two sets with broadly the same properties. The cooldown ensures that you need to spend some time in the other weapon rather than just being able to switch in, use a couple of skills, and immediately switch out.

Worth noting, too, that there is a trait that allows you to gain initiative when weaponswapping. It's normally used with builds that are essentially "swapping" the same set, however, such as dual staff or putting the MH in one set and the OH in the other.

[TheThief.8475]

11 hours ago, DeceiverX.8361 said:

Because it'd be ludicrously OP?

Take your favorite kit.

Now replace its bad skills with either all the utility from S/D or D/P, or all the damage from D/D or Staff.

Also Quick Pockets basically has the opposite effect where it essentially refreshes a skill cooldown of your choice after swapping.

And as for why they don't initiative bars back on swap, well, it's because the skills worth spamming on thief are high initiative and are worth spamming on thief for good reason.

Imagine how stupidly overpowered six consecutive Shadow Shots, Vaults, FS/LS combos, IStrike immob spams, etc. would be.

 

 

Then just make it like all the other classes, where if you have the same weapons equipped in the second set the cooldown don't reset (the initiative don't refill in this case)

[DeceiverX.8361]

5 hours ago, bq pd.2148 said:

if another profession swaps to the same weapon the cooldowns remain, thus the initative would have to be based on how many weapons you change with the swap: weapons from 0 hands, 1 hand or 2 hands.

more ini overall would maybe give the devs some room to change m7 ini spam and thus make it easier to balance the weapons across the specs with the coming changes.

I mean skill cooldowns are global across multiple weapon swaps for the other professions, too, just like thief.

If you cast a skill with a 15 second cooldown, immediately swap, wait 10 seconds, and swap back, there are still 5 seconds remaining on said cooldown.  Just toggling between different weapons doesn't eliminate the originating cooldowns.  Proposing a blanket refunding of initiative even into non-same kits is basically like giving professions full cooldown resets each re-swap.  And that is also quite overpowered in respects to high-impact skills.

Good example:  Warrior's shield block being refunded every 5-10 seconds based on their swap cooldown versus a thief getting an initiative refund when swapping between shortbow and S/D mashing evades.  The amount of evade skills effectively doubles from this change.

By extension, ANet dropping cooldowns on significant power-budget skills broad-spectrum is bad for the game and demanding it be done for the thief is encouraging the power creep arms race that's destroyed the integrity of the game's balance for the last several years.

It also doesn't address my first point in respects to giving the thief way more resources and utility than intended; doing stuff like double/triple vault into double IArrow for a reset, waiting for swap timers, then rinsing and repeating just isn't balanced and runs counter to the entire initiative mechanic's design of encouraging split-second decision-making on which skills to use.

The causal problem for people justifying the introduction of this mechanic is one of the following:

- That so many of the thief's skills - especially on offmeta weapon combinations - are just bad and overpriced for initiative, and are therefore largely unused since initiative is otherwise a very precious resource, while the good skills are insanely strong individually and become so much stronger with the ability to recast them, so people more or less just use initiative on only those skills

or;

- Powercreep on other professions is being used to justify further powercreep of the thief and thus perpetuating the problem

or;

- People are bad at managing initiative and don't want to think about what they're doing.

The first is solved by making other options better for various situations to encourage smarter play and better use of initiative.

The second is solved by reducing power creep on other professions rather than making more of a mess.

The third is not solvable without making the thief grossly OP via spam or giving them unprecedented levels of utility which will justify calls by other professions' players to either have the thief nerfed in its weapon skills' damage, utility, or initiative costs (defeating the entire purpose of this venture), or demand their own professions get buffed due to perceived unfairness, continuing the cycle of powercreep.

Edited July 14, 2023 by DeceiverX.8361

[bq pd.2148]

1 hour ago, DeceiverX.8361 said:

I mean skill cooldowns are global across multiple weapon swaps for the other professions, too, just like thief.

If you cast a skill with a 15 second cooldown, immediately swap, wait 10 seconds, and swap back, there are still 5 seconds remaining on said cooldown.  Just toggling between different weapons doesn't eliminate the originating cooldowns.  Proposing a blanket refunding of initiative even into non-same kits is basically like giving professions full cooldown resets each re-swap.  And that is also quite overpowered in respects to high-impact skills.

it doesnt have to be full ini. yet even a full ini bar is not the same as no cooldowns, our ini pool is just too small for that  - for good reason as flexibility is powerful too. two seperately regenerating/depleting bars is what also was suggested several times on this forum, that would get closer to how it works for other professions.

of course non of this is needed, but that is one place one could put in additional ini regen instead of the various traits we have currently to make the weapon skill resource cost more consistent across builds. the difference in available ini between a build that does not use any ini regen trait vs one that stacks multiple is too much IMO.

 

 

[FrancisN.9276]

7 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Because the main idea with weapon swap is to allow you to switch functionality, not simply to maximise damage by leveraging cooldowns from two weapon sets. Thief, if anything, gets more out of weaponswap since thieves can usually maximise DPS with just one weaponset, allowing them to use the other weaponset for adaptability (range versus melee, CC, mobility, etc) rather than taking two sets with broadly the same properties. The cooldown ensures that you need to spend some time in the other weapon rather than just being able to switch in, use a couple of skills, and immediately switch out.

Worth noting, too, that there is a trait that allows you to gain initiative when weaponswapping. It's normally used with builds that are essentially "swapping" the same set, however, such as dual staff or putting the MH in one set and the OH in the other.

It is not that thieves can maximise their damage with just one weapon set, but it is that thief has to because their traitline has only one trait (not one traitline) that benefits weapon swapping and the rest are kind of speciallized into a single kit, in the sense that if you switch away from that kit, any other weapon skills do not play well with your traits anymore because of poor damage coefficiency or the lack of access to certain mechanics (let's not forget thieves have the lowest HP compared to other prof, and these mechanics, like stealth or dodge or shroud, are the only thing keeping up thieves' sustainability). Regarding your second point about adaptability with the second set, is that not what every other professions have as well? The simple solution to balance out the playing field does not require refunding ini on weapon swapping, but only removing or reducing the CD on swapping. With an empty ini bar, what OP thing can thief do with a swap anyway? And if the bar is not empty, thief can use any ini-efficient skill on the weapon he already has equipped just the same. It is true that swapping on shorter CD gives thieves more adaptability, but this has already come at the cost of not having a separate ini bar (equivalent to other profession's separate weapon skill CD) for different weapons. Or how do you feel if we make other classes share the same CD on weapon skills on swapping to make it fair?

Edited July 14, 2023 by FrancisN.9276

[Polantaris.9513]

10 hours ago, DeceiverX.8361 said:

I mean skill cooldowns are global across multiple weapon swaps for the other professions, too, just like thief.

If you cast a skill with a 15 second cooldown, immediately swap, wait 10 seconds, and swap back, there are still 5 seconds remaining on said cooldown.  Just toggling between different weapons doesn't eliminate the originating cooldowns.  Proposing a blanket refunding of initiative even into non-same kits is basically like giving professions full cooldown resets each re-swap.  And that is also quite overpowered in respects to high-impact skills.

Good example:  Warrior's shield block being refunded every 5-10 seconds based on their swap cooldown versus a thief getting an initiative refund when swapping between shortbow and S/D mashing evades.  The amount of evade skills effectively doubles from this change.

By extension, ANet dropping cooldowns on significant power-budget skills broad-spectrum is bad for the game and demanding it be done for the thief is encouraging the power creep arms race that's destroyed the integrity of the game's balance for the last several years.

It also doesn't address my first point in respects to giving the thief way more resources and utility than intended; doing stuff like double/triple vault into double IArrow for a reset, waiting for swap timers, then rinsing and repeating just isn't balanced and runs counter to the entire initiative mechanic's design of encouraging split-second decision-making on which skills to use.

Okay so it's not just me that doesn't understand the core problem statement, and I was wondering if they were incorrectly attributing the problem to the wrong thing.

Weapon skills don't refresh on weapon swap, and not every class has their class mechanic reset on swap, either. My Virtuoso doesn't get their blades nor their bladeskill cooldowns reset on weapon swap. And any weapon cooldown that's longer than the weapon swap is still on cooldown for the remainder of time.

Elementalist works this way as well, the only difference is that if you're swapping back to the element with skills on cooldown before they're off cooldown, you're probably doing something wrong in the first place. That being said, as an Offhand Dagger Weaver, skills like Earthquake can easily still be on cooldown if you do your attunement rotation incorrectly or have to swap quickly for some reason (for example, the Weaver Elite rotation).

Overall, it sounds like Initiative needs some attention in general and that doesn't really surprise me, Thief has never felt like a class that had a good mechanic to me honestly, and I've tried to play it multiple times, going back to the game's release because back then they insisted Thief was the GW1 Assassin for GW2 (my main in GW1) and it's not even close. Initiative has never felt good to me personally.

[draxynnic.3719]

9 hours ago, FrancisN.9276 said:

It is not that thieves can maximise their damage with just one weapon set, but it is that thief has to because their traitline has only one trait (not one traitline) that benefits weapon swapping and the rest are kind of speciallized into a single kit, in the sense that if you switch away from that kit, any other weapon skills do not play well with your traits anymore because of poor damage coefficiency or the lack of access to certain mechanics (let's not forget thieves have the lowest HP compared to other prof, and these mechanics, like stealth or dodge or shroud, are the only thing keeping up thieves' sustainability). Regarding your second point about adaptability with the second set, is that not what every other professions have as well? The simple solution to balance out the playing field does not require refunding ini on weapon swapping, but only removing or reducing the CD on swapping. With an empty ini bar, what OP thing can thief do with a swap anyway? And if the bar is not empty, thief can use any ini-efficient skill on the weapon he already has equipped just the same. It is true that swapping on shorter CD gives thieves more adaptability, but this has already come at the cost of not having a separate ini bar (equivalent to other profession's separate weapon skill CD) for different weapons. Or how do you feel if we make other classes share the same CD on weapon skills on swapping to make it fair?

Because thief is balanced around being able to get top DPS without weaponswapping since it doesn't get the benefit of accessing more cooldowns out of it (and this has already been taken into account). Want to maximise DPS with your weapon skills as a thief? Find the skill or combination of skills that provides the best DPS at a sustainable usage of initiative, and spam that.

Other professions can use their second set for versatility, yes, obviously. But they're paying an opportunity cost for that - if they do so, they're not taking two sets optimised for DPS and thus their DPS has likely dropped. Thief only needs one DPS set and can thus have almost anything in the other set.

Edited July 15, 2023 by draxynnic.3719

[ZeroTheRuler.7415]

20 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Because thief is balanced around being able to get top DPS without weaponswapping since it doesn't get the benefit of accessing more cooldowns out of it (and this has already been taken into account). Want to maximise DPS with your weapon skills as a thief? Find the skill or combination of skills that provides the best DPS at a sustainable usage of initiative, and spam that.

Other professions can use their second set for versatility, yes, obviously. But they're paying an opportunity cost for that - if they do so, they're not taking two sets optimised for DPS and thus their DPS has likely dropped. Thief only needs one DPS set and can thus have almost anything in the other set.

I feel like this is more of a PvP/WvW competitive game mode discussion vs a PvE one. It's completely fine for PvE IMO.

[draxynnic.3719]

3 hours ago, ZeroTheRuler.7415 said:

I feel like this is more of a PvP/WvW competitive game mode discussion vs a PvE one. It's completely fine for PvE IMO.

True enough, but the general principles still apply in competitive, I think. Thief doesn't get a resource reset by swapping weapons, but it does get to spend all of its resources on whatever skill is most useful in the circumstance, something most professions can't do. Switching is still primarily a mode-switch rather than something you do as part of a spike, but you need to commit to that weaponset for ten seconds or so rather than being able to drop in, use one skill, and switch right back again.

[Calypsx.7568]

I play thief because it isn't a weapon swap heavy class. I came to gw2 as a person who isn't a fan of weapon swapping but if I have to have the mechanic I prefer it to be situational over rotational, thief gives me exactly this.

 

Edited July 19, 2023 by Calypsx.7568

[SlayerXX.7138]

Just switch without emptying your initiative or take quick pockets. That is the most non-sensical buff I read in a while. Upvoted because "Buff ME". That is just a flat out not needed buff, that would start a cascade of really ugly nerfs to balance it out.
 

[Sarge shot Grif.6450]

My question is why doesn't alacrity give us slightly increased initiative regen.

[Szymon.5369]

37 minutes ago, Sarge shot Grif.6450 said:

My question is why doesn't alacrity give us slightly increased initiative regen.

That would be neat, but also it would logically open the gates to chill reducing initiative regen, and I'm not sure if that's a can of worms I want opened personally.