Guild Wars 2

After some hands on time with the thief, and talking with other players, I’ve come to very simple conclusion; steal is useless and initiative is a handicap. To outline my feeling in full I’m going to post here a section from a thread I created on GuildWars2guru.

You’ve given me a lot to think over and try out, but never the less the main thing I’m getting from you and others is “initiative is a handicap unless you trait for steal.”
I take issue with that for a lot of reasons. First and foremost being that I find it utterly ridiculous and unfair that I have to be locked into the Trickery trait line to be viable, regardless of what my actual build may be. Not only is that counter to the very concept of customization; it limits some of the possible builds one could try out. I am reminded of Henry Ford who once said, about his Model T automobile, “you can buy it in any color you want, as long as it’s black.” Only now it is more like “You can have any build you want, as long as it’s Trickery.”

The other thing that bugs me is the innate (untraited) uselessness of steal. You never hear anyone talking about how great it is without naming some trait. Steal is useful because of the damage (trait), the boons (trait), the initiative regen (trait), the poison (trait) and so on and so forth. I think it really speaks poorly of the overall profession design when you need to invest upward to twenty-five trait points to make its mechanic worth using. And even more so that you have to invest at least fifteen of those points in order to make any viable builds. A warrior doesn’t need to trait his burst skill to make it worth having, nor a necro with his death shroud. They can trait these things and it does enhance their builds and their play styles; but they don’t have to.
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As you may see from the above, I feel like the steal skill is useless without particular traits, and also that steal related traits from the Trickery line are necessary to maintain a functional amount of initiative during combat. If others agree than this is a huge problem. That said the best, quickest, and easiest way to fix this problem is very simple. Replace the adept minor trait from Trickery with something else, and make the three point initiative regain on steal default.

If that on steal regain is the only real method of initiative management thieves get then it should be easily attainable right from the beginning and in a way that does not punish us for not spending those five points in Trickery. By making the initiative regain default to the skill you both make steal useful without traits, and prevent initiative starved thieves from being shackled to the Trickery line.