QoL Request that pretty much any thief player would appreciate

[Jugglemonkey.8741]

Hey Devs. If you're reading this, this would be a super easy change that would make a LOT of thief players happy. 

Change Preparedness from "Increases maximum initiative by 3. Gain increased expertise" to "Increases movement speed by 25%. Gain increased expertise" and just increase the base initiative to 15 already. 

Effects: 

• Easier for devs to balance weapon ini costs without making trickery required in every build which leads to more choices, more tradeoffs and more fun for thief players.
• Meta PvP and WvW builds remain unchanged. PvE builds gain the extra 3 ini assuming your're not playing specter, but none of those builds would overperform because of it. 
• Specter can keep the -3 ini penalty if you really want to do that without being locked into trickery. This means you can do interesting things in WvW like make healer builds using shadow arts for group sustain and acrobatics for personal sustain, which in my opinion would make the spec much more viable in WvW zergs (see my sig for similar idea using deadeye).
• It annoys me that necro is the only other class besides thief that doesn't have 25% move speed as a trait. Yes, I am that guy that plays critical strikes, shadow arts and trickery on core thief. Sure, there could be something "better" here, but this is QoL not power creep, right?

[Zacchary.6183]

On top of that they should redo signet of shadows as it is a lackluster signet that holds no candle over Agility. 

[Antycypator.9874]

It really annoys me for YEARS that thief doesn't have passive movement speed from traits.

[wolfer.7945]

I don't need thieves running away faster.  So many are just cowards.  Stay and take your death.  

 

But really.  It's nice idea.  Fixes the initiative, but I'm not sure the 25% speed would be the right pick. May be something that works with shadow step, like remove a single condition after teleporting more then 200, 5 sec cool down. 

[Asra.8746]

There are better choices than movement speed for this trait adjustment - but, knowing ANet's balance team, when they finally get around to it (if they ever do), they will make the initiative baseline and not add anything as replacement.

[nopoet.2960]

5 hours ago, Asra.8746 said:

There are better choices than movement speed for this trait adjustment - but, knowing ANet's balance team, when they finally get around to it (if they ever do), they will make the initiative baseline and not add anything as replacement.

It could be: upon entering combat your first attack cost 3 less initiative.  This resets upon being revealed.  So you get a little buff icon whenever you are out of combat or get revealed.  Every thief just has 12 ini. 

[Asur.9178]

25 minutes ago, nopoet.2960 said:

It could be: upon entering combat your first attack cost 3 less initiative.  This resets upon being revealed.  So you get a little buff icon whenever you are out of combat or get revealed.  Every thief just has 12 ini. 

Pass. The game needs less stealth abuse...not more.

[nopoet.2960]

On 3/21/2024 at 3:49 PM, Asur.9178 said:

Pass. The game needs less stealth abuse...not more.

Ok...Your first attack upon entering combat or after being disabled cost 3 less initiative

 

Edited March 22 by nopoet.2960

[Jugglemonkey.8741]

22 hours ago, wolfer.7945 said:

I don't need thieves running away faster.  So many are just cowards.  Stay and take your death.  

 

But really.  It's nice idea.  Fixes the initiative, but I'm not sure the 25% speed would be the right pick. May be something that works with shadow step, like remove a single condition after teleporting more then 200, 5 sec cool down. 

11 hours ago, Asra.8746 said:

There are better choices than movement speed for this trait adjustment - but, knowing ANet's balance team, when they finally get around to it (if they ever do), they will make the initiative baseline and not add anything as replacement.

6 hours ago, nopoet.2960 said:

It could be: upon entering combat your first attack cost 3 less initiative.  This resets upon being revealed.  So you get a little buff icon whenever you are out of combat or get revealed.  Every thief just has 12 ini. 

Tbh the reason I chose the 25% movement speed was partially that it's always been a pet peeve of mine that we don't have a trait for it and 7/9 other professions do, partially that it would help core thief, and partially it's so innocuous that basically nobody could argue it was too much. The fact that it's a no brainer change makes it much more likely to happen because there are no balance implications whatsoever for a dev to think about. I'm more than happy to hear suggestions for something else tho, just try to keep power creep out of it etc. 

[Vavume.8065]

25% movement speed should be baseline, no thief should ever be slow.