Guild Wars 2

You are asking for options which already exist in the game. Try to choose traits with initiative recovery and it becomes less of an issue. Mine is built using the bottom 3 trait lines and has little problem with initiative recovery. Cloak and dagger with the 2 initiative recovery on stealth makes it a lot cheaper; essentially you can use it non-stop every time stealth immunity wears off.

But no matter what, spamming Death Blossom will deplete your initiative quickly. I have the feeling it will be one of the thief skills to be nerfed. Do we really want it to be even more overpowering by recovering initiative from its use?

I will also add that initiative generation is perfectly fine for thieves… if you want lot of initiative you need to spec such, the bottom trait line is a perfect example, it has the most initiative bonuses directly or indirectly gained by specializing in it.

Of course if you, for example spam unload (P+P, 3 ability) yes you will get initiative starved for a short while, but the beauty in that is that thieves also happen to have lot of mobility, so having a moment with no initiative does not necessarily mean you can’t do anything (f.ex. caltrops on dodge trait is a great thing to resort to for the moments without initiative, couple that with the endurance enhancing traits and condition damage/duration and lo and behold you have something good for that moment).

The most obvious bandage is of course Roll of initiative utility skill.

Yes, there are plenty of ways to trait up your Initiative gain. Making it easier to achieve would be ridiculously unbalanced, it would basically be like removing the cooldown from the other classes moves. If you spam out all your attacks and can’t do anything else, and that’s not what you meant to do, then you’re doing something wrong. Either moderate which moves you use and how often, or get used to hit and run play.