Guild Wars 2

I think it’s generally accepted within the thief community that, despite its scaling with healing power buff on December 10th, Assassin’s Reward is extremely lackluster for a grandmaster trait.

Due to its placement in Acrobatics, it synergizes well with Trickery builds, which leads to anyone using both lacking both Stealth and Condition Removal. This is an issue in the current meta, and one of the better proposed ideas is to let Assassin’s Reward have a “countdown buff” which removes a condition for every ~5 initiative spent. Being on par with Stealth thieves which have condition removal periodically in stealth, this would allow Assassin’s Reward the viability in a PvP format which most acrobatics builds (aside from one S/D + S/D build that’s fallen out of place) so desperately lack. Non-stealth builds are also actively engaged in combat, and I feel that this change to Assassin’s Reward would do wonders for build diversity for thieves in PvP, who are currently pigeonholed into 3 build archetypes (S/D acrobatics, D/P trickery/Shadow Arts, S/P trickery), none of which dare take Assassin’s Reward due to the lack of survivability you have against condition builds whilst running it.

Thank you for your consideration,
~Glïnt

I go with the “countdown buff” which removes a condition for every ~5 initiative spent….

But it would greatly decrease build diversity if Assassin Reward would scaling with healing power , because of the fact wvw thiefs would simple Combine Assassin Reward with Shadow Rejuvenation (and also with Patience and Shadow Embrace) to get higher regeneration effects as a warrior.

The “healing trait/lines” (AR , SR) maybe need a special effect, which telling, you can use XI/ SR ins shadow art traitline with stealth (for wvw stealth thiefs)
And XI/AR for non stealth tpvp thiefs (p/p, s/p, sh), you can only increase base heal of AR to 100 on 1 INit. when traits were separated; otherwise more ppl would flame the NEW OP healing power of perma stealthing thiefs .

I think, ANet should have never changed Assassins Reward to a Grandmaster Trait.
They should have just buffed it, but shouldn#t have moved it to Grand master.

If ANet just wanted to move the silly Hard to Catch Trait into Master, they could have used an other Trait to move it to Grand Master.

For Example:

They could have buffed Pain Response and moved that one onstead to Grandmaster and keep Assassins Reward as a little buffed Master Trait.

would have made imo alot more sense.

Buffing Pain Response by addign maybe a new boon together with Regeneration, like Stability to give Thieves finally a way to get Stability somehow and if not under Acrobatics Grandmaster, where the hell then???

That little buff together with that Trait removing also besides of Burning, poison and Bleeding also Confusion for example or Torment.

With these little 2 changes owuld have been that trait more than worthy to become a Grandmaster Trait.. far more worthy, than it Assasins Reward is.

Arkantos.7460:

I go with the “countdown buff” which removes a condition for every ~5 initiative spent….

But it would greatly decrease build diversity if Assassin Reward would scaling with healing power , because of the fact wvw thiefs would simple Combine Assassin Reward with Shadow Rejuvenation (and also with Patience and Shadow Embrace) to get higher regeneration effects as a warrior.

The “healing trait/lines” (AR , SR) maybe need a special effect, which telling, you can use XI/ SR ins shadow art traitline with stealth (for wvw stealth thiefs)
And XI/AR for non stealth tpvp thiefs (p/p, s/p, sh), you can only increase base heal of AR to 100 on 1 INit. when traits were separated; otherwise more ppl would flame the NEW OP healing power of perma stealthing thiefs .

However, in choosing both they choose to become very tanky, and miss out on damage and condition-based trait lines, which is the point of putting powerful traits into Grandmaster categories. They wouldn’t be able to kill anything, let alone get more than 22% crit chance without any investment into Critical Strikes. That basically becomes a trolling build for WvW, but in PvP a full clerics SA/Acro thief wouldn’t have any place due to stealth lacking the ability to hold a point. Warriors don’t have to invest in 60 trait points and healing gear to have their sustain be considered OP. A thief running the aforementioned is a joke when considering things like how much damage and pressure he’s giving up just for all of that survivability.