Guild Wars 2

What is it:

Hidden Assassin is minor GM trait in the Shadow Arts trait line for the thief. Everytime you gain stealth, you get 2 stacks of might for 15 seconds. It doesn’t matter if you were already stealth – it procs every 3-4 secs while you are in stealth. For example, if you use Shadow Refuge, you will have about 10+ stacks of might after the duration of stealth.

Why do I think this is imbalance:

The Shadow Arts line is, for the most part, defensive. You are giving up offensive for defense but this one minor trait allows you to hit almost as hard as a glass cannon thief.

Lets compare two specs; 25/30/0/0/15 vs 10/30/30/0/0

The first is purely offensive with no traits in defense. This is a pure glass cannon spec. You have 15% more damage from the 25 point minor trait and from dagger training. You also get about another 5-10% from the additional power.

The second has tons of survivable traits such as heal in stealth, extra toughness, increase stealth up time, condi cleans, blind on stealth, or regen in stealth. This spec has 150 less power than the first spec.

When you take Hidden Assassin trait into account, the total power from the defensive spec exceed that of the GC spec. With 6-8 stacks of might, you will have 60 to 130 more power than the GC spec. 100 power is equal to roughly 8-10% more damage. When you add it all up, the defensive spec does roughly 5-10% less than the GC spec.

So why should a defensive spec be afforded close to GC level of damage? I see this as imbalance.

Solution:

They could either move the minor trait to the power line or keep it where it is and put a 10 seconds ICD.

100 power is usually <5% damage because these builds easily have >2000 power already (approaching 3000 in WvW or 3.5%).

Even if we were to be generous and use 5% the deadly arts build would still come out ahead—it gets 15% from traits while the shadow arts build has +10% from full might stacks. This only occurs for a short time after refuge or if they spend an inordinate amount of time setting up with black powder. Additionally they lose out on the +20% crit rate from fury on steal, or they lose out on 2k damage/poison from mug (which could easily account for 10% of the damage required to down a target).

Conclusion: the offensive power of deadly arts is still far ahead of shadow arts.

Every class has a GM minor trait that has something to do with damage, even the defensive trait lines