Guild Wars 2

I would like to propose a new defense mechanic to thieves.
Shadow Form, a short duration “protection” with a higher reduce of damage than the normal protection.
But introducing this ability should go in hand with reducing the amount of stealth and perhaps the amounts of evade. This is neccessary to make thieves less annoying to fight with, while keeping them strong enough to compete with the other characters.
This ability could be introduced via traits and skills. Think of something like this:
- Trait: Gain Shadow Form when you are disabled.
- Trait: Gain Shadow Form on venom use.
- Trait: Gain Shadow Form on signet use.
- Trait: Gain Shadow Form on Stealth (note that the amount of stealth should be reduced)
- Trait: Gain Shadow Form on weapon swap
- Trait: Gain Shadow Form when using a healing skill.
- Trait: Gain Shadow Form when using a trap.
- Skill: Gain Shadow Form

This would still give the thief it’s own way of fighting, just less dependant on stealth, evade spam and heavy teleports.
Note that I have no intention to make thieves better than ‘the balanced classes’ in any part of the game. Just a less annoying thief.