Its not only steal, its also other teleporting abilities which fail alot. But one after one.
One or two patches ago ArenaNet “fixed” Steal by preventing a thief from stealing on a target which is in range, but not physically reachable. This “fix” seems to be a check based on the position of the thief: Thief uses Steal. If Thief next to target, then steal item, apply buffs etc. If Thief not next to target, do not steal item, do not apply buffs etc. However, this makes Steal go on full cooldown because the target actually is in range.
Now that would not be that bad if teleporting istelf wasnt buggy already. More than often i shadowstep to my target, only to be zipped back instantly because the server was like " no, you cannot shadowstep over there. There is a small stone in your path". Another thing is that this check actually takes time, which is why all steal related effects apply about .5 seconds later. When my theory is correct, the server checks your actual position beforehand, thus it takes three times your usual latency to finally activate steal.
As Matze has pointed out already, this leads to numerous problems. The delay prevents using steal as an interrupt for critical actions like Eartshaker, Eviscerate, Heartseeker etc. One is that the interrupt may proc AFTER the target has finished its move, the other is that because of the delay you get ported to target´s position, but when the interrupt would proc, the target is out of range already, thus resulting in a missed Steal with full CD. This issue also makes Steal dodgeable / blindable /blockable after it has been used and you teleported to the target
Then there´s the infamous BP-Shot + HS +Steal combo, or CND precast + Steal combo. Because of the delay you get instantly revealed if you use Steal with traited Mug too late, as Mug may proc after you entered stealth even though you activated Steal before entering stealth.
Ways to fix this are a) revert the last change to Steal and remove that position check as it takes way too much time to get through. All above issues magnify themselves by multiples once you´re lagging due to connection or server problems. And b) – finally get rid of the godkittenawful pathfinding for shadowsteps / teleports. This needs to be improved dramaticly. Flatten the ground collision map, or make the pathfinding AI be more generous. if needed, get rid of the pathfinding for teleports and make all teleportation skills work like Mesmer portals. Manually mark all areas which are eligible for teleporting and simply disallow teleportation from one area into another in order to prevent people from teleporting onto walls, through doors and stuff like that.
Final note @Matze:
“4. When you Steal might from a target ,with the trait Bountiful Theft, the mightstacks dissappear. For example: A warrior has 20 stacks might. You Steal them -> 19 stacks might dissappear and you get 1 stack of might from the Steal. If you remove them with the sword/dagger ability Larcenous Strike you get the full 20 stacks.”
This probably ain´t a bug but. This is how Bountiful Theft has always worked, sadly. Bountiful Theft never actually transfered boons from target to self and allies, but rather stripped x,y,z boon from target and reapplied x,y,z boon with fixed duration to self and allies. Test it out, you always get the same duration and number of stacks (1) of the stripped boon, no matter if said boon lasted one second or one minute on the target and no matter if there was one stack or 25 stacks of said boon on the target. This is ArenaNet´s impressive skill of writing accurate trait tooltips :S
thanks