Guild Wars 2

…and has been for some time now. Is AreneNet going to fix this, or will we continue to see a mass of thieves being effectively perma-evade, and giving them unblockable boon steal.

It’s like combining Mesmer Arcane Thievery and Blurred Frenzy and putting it on a 3 second cooldown.

Pema evade

Oct-15 patch already reduced the boonsteal from 2 to 1.

the boonsteal isn’t the problem. The problem is that it’s spammable evade, which is completely broken.

Thedenofsin.7340:

the boonsteal isn’t the problem. The problem is that it’s spammable evade, which is completely broken.

Well, Pistol Whip and Death Blossom are spammable evades too…
It’s the thief mechanic, deal with that. When they are not evading, they usually die in two blows.

Maybe you should watch the animation and burst the thief right after he used flanking strike, since he should use Larcenous Strike, which is quite slow, in order to evade again.

Those abilities aren’t tied to an unblockable boonsteal and also not on the same weapon as a 0 second cooldown shadowstep.

It needs to be nerfed. The game is getting bad enough with all these abilities requiring 0 skill to use. This needs to go.

Thedenofsin.7340:

Those abilities aren’t tied to an unblockable boonsteal and also not on the same weapon as a 0 second cooldown shadowstep.

It needs to be nerfed. The game is getting bad enough with all these abilities requiring 0 skill to use. This needs to go.

It is just ONE boon stolen on 5 initiative. To get the evade and the boonsteal, a thief is wasting almost half of his initiative bar or 1/3 if traited with 15 trickery.

The 0 cooldown shadowstep is on 3 initiative (2 to return) too.

I mean, they can’t spam evades and shadowstepping all around at the same time.
If a thief is shadowstepping all around, he’s only autoattacking. If he’s spamming evades, then he’s not shadowstepping.

Both of the two situations have clear counterplays on any profession.

If they nerf S\D thieves and don’t nerf condi spam necros and hambow warrios I will quit thief class for sure .

Thedenofsin.7340:

Those abilities aren’t tied to an unblockable boonsteal and also not on the same weapon as a 0 second cooldown shadowstep.

It needs to be nerfed. The game is getting bad enough with all these abilities requiring 0 skill to use. This needs to go.

Poor little rabbit

Thedenofsin.7340:

the boonsteal isn’t the problem. The problem is that it’s spammable evade, which is completely broken.

The evade is not spammable.

Every time a thief evades, he has to either spend 2 init and .5 seconds casting LS, or wait 5s for FS to cycle back on.

If I were to spam my 3 key, I’d spend 50% of the time evading, and 50% of the time standing in place.

It’s fine. Watch the animatons.

Thedenofsin.7340:

Those abilities aren’t tied to an unblockable boonsteal and also not on the same weapon as a 0 second cooldown shadowstep.

It needs to be nerfed. The game is getting bad enough with all these abilities requiring 0 skill to use. This needs to go.

Thieves rely on evasion and mobility to survive by design
-Lowest base HP pool
-No protection, aegis, or stability (No, daggerstorm does not count as a method to gain stability)
-Middle tier armor
-No blocks, no immunities, no psuedo-immunites (think zerkers stand/endure pain)
-Sub-par condition removal
- Our toughness traitline is entirely stealth reliant – there’s no point in trying to increase our survivability via points in this tree for specs that don’t use stealth constantly.

If you really think it takes 0 skill to play S/D well, but all means, roll one and try it out.
I think you’ll find yourself surprised.

S/D needs to be glassy to do competitive sustained damage – one mistake can and will cost you half your health. You don’t get time to think about what you’re going to do next – you need to know what your possible next steps are going to be 5 seconds into the future, and have enough experience to make the correct snap decisions based on how the fight plays out.

Ashanor.5319:

It’s fine. Watch the animatons.

Don´t go that way. warrior have some good animations and still it will be nerfed. It depends how much people qq.

silentnight warrior.2714:

Ashanor.5319:

It’s fine. Watch the animatons.

Don´t go that way. warrior have some good animations and still it will be nerfed. It depends how much people qq.

“Watch the animations” is a simple way to put it for people who understand all the complaints surrounding S/D thief.

The animation you’re mostly watching for is Flanking Strike (FS), the evade. It does low damage even in a Glass setup, and doesn’t have any special effects attached to it (ignoring blocks, stealing boons, etc) beside the evade. Don’t try to use .75 and 1s casting time skills when you know a thief has FS up, because that’s what it’s their for.

The secondary animations you want to watch for are CS and LS – they have the same animation, and carry the bulk of the damage and utility in the set.

Put simply – save your big attacks for after the thief has used FS (hard to miss, it’s a very visible/flashy move) so you know they can’t FS again. Pay attention to the location of their return circle. If you force a thief to use SR to evade your big swings (because they blew FS and don’t have the survivability to eat a big swing), you’re winning – the initiative cost of these skills adds up quickly.

If you can force me to use my skills when you want me to, rather than at my own discretion, you’re winning the fight.

It’s not terribly imba.
It’s just kittenty, kittenty gameplay.

Which is far worse than imba.

The problem is that alot of people don’t even know what is SR . I trolled a guardian in a dual that kept spamming his big attacks. I just ported endlessly until he rage quit and called me a noob for playing a broken perma-teleport thief . And that guy was rank 41

silentnight warrior.2714:

Don´t go that way. warrior have some good animations and still it will be nerfed. It depends how much people qq.

You can’t compare Warriors to thief.
A thief not evading is a dead thief.
A warrior not evading or not immune to damage is still horribly tough to kill.

It is somewhat overpowered yes. Damage reduction would be in place, but I want the boon removal back.

Thieves rely on evasion and mobility to survive by design
-Lowest base HP pool
-No protection, aegis, or stability (No, daggerstorm does not count as a method to gain stability)
-Middle tier armor
-No blocks, no immunities, no psuedo-immunites (think zerkers stand/endure pain)
-Sub-par condition removal
- Our toughness traitline is entirely stealth reliant – there’s no point in trying to increase our survivability via points in this tree for specs that don’t use stealth constantly.

But they do have stealth and a heal that has no cast time, not to mention the many teleports they have access to. This particular build also has some access to stability through Lyssa runes and basilisk venom, and also some “random” access through boon steal. When pondering whether if a build has to be shaved, it isn’t relevant what the class in question in general relies to. All that matters is if the build as whole is too powerful or not. However, when the actual nerf is done, then one of course has to consider that class in general so that balanced builds aren’t affected too much.

Master of Timespace.2548:

It is somewhat overpowered yes. Damage reduction would be in place, but I want the boon removal back.

Please explain why you think the skill is OP. DPS is on par with Auto attack, and auto attack causes cripple and weakness. I think 5 init is fair to pay for an evade and a boon strip that does the same damage as pressing 1 close to your target.

Thieves rely on evasion and mobility to survive by design
-Lowest base HP pool
-No protection, aegis, or stability (No, daggerstorm does not count as a method to gain stability)
-Middle tier armor
-No blocks, no immunities, no psuedo-immunites (think zerkers stand/endure pain)
-Sub-par condition removal
- Our toughness traitline is entirely stealth reliant – there’s no point in trying to increase our survivability via points in this tree for specs that don’t use stealth constantly.

But they do have stealth and a heal that has no cast time, not to mention the many teleports they have access to. This particular build also has some access to stability through Lyssa runes and basilisk venom. When pondering whether if a build has to be shaved, it isn’t relevant what the class in question in general relies to. All that matters is if the build as whole is too powerful or not. However, when the actual nerf is done, then one of course has to consider that class in general so that balanced builds aren’t affected too much.

Stealth does not mitigate damage. It just makes you untargetable. It also prevents contesting points. It isn’t a very powerful tool for S/D because it costs 6 init to access, they generally don’t have any points in SA, and it doesn’t open up any strong options for them. 90% of the time, you’ll see an S/D thief stealth to interrupt a stomp/res/long casting time ability being used without stability.

Access to stability via rune choices is not the same as in-class access to stability. Also note, Lyssa runes are generally taken due to thieves inability to drop a large number of conditions in a short period of time – if you’re using it for stability, you’re not going to have it for condition cleansing.

What is it that makes you feel that S/D is overpowered, and needs to be shaved?

Ashanor.5319:

It’s fine. Watch the animatons.

#1)It’s got a 0.5 second cast time.

1. Watching the animations on an Asura thief…. yeah, not happening.

If you have 200ms of lag that means you have 300ms to react.
That’s pushing the limit of what the average person can visually react to.
Assuming the lag is proportional up and downstream, it takes 100ms for your reaction to register at the server. That leaves you 200ms of time to register an actionable reaction. That’s pushing the limit of what most humans can visually react to.

evilapprentice.6379:

Thedenofsin.7340:

Those abilities aren’t tied to an unblockable boonsteal and also not on the same weapon as a 0 second cooldown shadowstep.

It needs to be nerfed. The game is getting bad enough with all these abilities requiring 0 skill to use. This needs to go.

Thieves rely on evasion and mobility to survive by design
-Lowest base HP pool
-No protection, aegis, or stability (No, daggerstorm does not count as a method to gain stability)
-Middle tier armor
-No blocks, no immunities, no psuedo-immunites (think zerkers stand/endure pain)
-Sub-par condition removal
- Our toughness traitline is entirely stealth reliant – there’s no point in trying to increase our survivability via points in this tree for specs that don’t use stealth constantly.

Boon stealing, lots of blinds, lots of stealth, lots of teleports, condition removal every time you shadowstep, every 3 seconds in stealth, low cooldown on heals, regen while stealthed, abundant access to vigor.

Thieves have tons of survivability. This ability is just broken.

Thedenofsin.7340:

“Those abilities aren’t tied to an unblockable boonsteal and also not on the same weapon as a 0 second cooldown shadowstep

Well Pistolwhip is also sword so yes, you can still use inf strike and you just said that the boonsteal wasn’t a problem. I don’t really understand.

sorrow.2364:

Thedenofsin.7340:

the boonsteal isn’t the problem. The problem is that it’s spammable evade, which is completely broken.

Well, Pistol Whip and Death Blossom are spammable evades too…
It’s the thief mechanic, deal with that. When they are not evading, they usually die in two blows.

Maybe you should watch the animation and burst the thief right after he used flanking strike, since he should use Larcenous Strike, which is quite slow, in order to evade again.

seems u hasnt watched jumper guide. u can cast LS during another evade.

I think they should give them back the 2nd boon stolen, and actually fix Inf. Strike/Shadow return, which is the real problem. Inf. Strike completely destroys positioning, and it working w/o LOS is stupid. Shadow-return working while cc’d is one of the key things that makes punishing the high-evade uptime thief nearly impossible. If they fixed those 2 things, suddenly the high-evasion uptime that is necessary to survive isn’t insanely broken.

S\D is the only viable weapon set … you wanna force all thieves to use the D\P perma-stealth non-sense???

As long as they can wander around rendering any kind of position useless from the enemy, eles and mesmers will have a very hard problem finding their way into teams as hard dps..Honeslty you cant have that survivability with evasion, that damage with 4k ls on squishes and 2 k autos while having the potential to steal protection (ele is freaking balanced around having good amount of it to make up for kittenty stats) AND being able to chase anything through everything..
I cant see how something about these attributes of s/d thief shouldnt be toned down..pls tell me if theres something im missing

So the thief is suposed to be a free kill ? How im supossed to fight a stun-lock warrior without evades?

a t s e.9614:

S\D is the only viable weapon set … you wanna force all thieves to use the D\P perma-stealth non-sense???

Nobody wants thieves to be imbalanced. In fact, fixing inf. strike/shadow return is all that is necessary. Then you can actually play s/d tactically and still do well with all the evades, but spammers are gonna get stomped by good players.

Flanking/Larc strike is fine. The evasion is an issue with all of the instant-ports/pseudo-stunbreaks, but if you take away one then its not a problem.

a t s e.9614:

So the thief is suposed to be a free kill ? How im supossed to fight a stun-lock warrior without evades?

with tactical dodging like every other class too?

Thedenofsin.7340:

Ashanor.5319:

It’s fine. Watch the animatons.

#1)It’s got a 0.5 second cast time.

1. Watching the animations on an Asura thief…. yeah, not happening.

If you have 200ms of lag that means you have 300ms to react.
That’s pushing the limit of what the average person can visually react to.
Assuming the lag is proportional up and downstream, it takes 100ms for your reaction to register at the server. That leaves you 200ms of time to register an actionable reaction. That’s pushing the limit of what most humans can visually react to.

- Asura is the problem, not thief.
- lag is the problem, not thief.

Thedenofsin.7340:

evilapprentice.6379:

Thedenofsin.7340:

Those abilities aren’t tied to an unblockable boonsteal and also not on the same weapon as a 0 second cooldown shadowstep.

It needs to be nerfed. The game is getting bad enough with all these abilities requiring 0 skill to use. This needs to go.

Thieves rely on evasion and mobility to survive by design
-Lowest base HP pool
-No protection, aegis, or stability (No, daggerstorm does not count as a method to gain stability)
-Middle tier armor
-No blocks, no immunities, no psuedo-immunites (think zerkers stand/endure pain)
-Sub-par condition removal
- Our toughness traitline is entirely stealth reliant – there’s no point in trying to increase our survivability via points in this tree for specs that don’t use stealth constantly.

Boon stealing, lots of blinds, lots of stealth, lots of teleports, condition removal every time you shadowstep, every 3 seconds in stealth, low cooldown on heals, regen while stealthed, abundant access to vigor.

Thieves have tons of survivability. This ability is just broken.

Boon stealing? Yes.
Lots of blinds? No.
Lots of stealth? No.
Lots of teleports? Yes.
Condition removal on shadow step? No, actually on shadow return. Removes 1 condition for a total of 5 initiative.
Condition removal while stealthed? No.
Low cooldown on heals? Yes, but the heal with low cooldown heals for less.
Regeneration while stealthed? No.
Abundant access to vigor? Normally around 66% uptime, not counting eventually stolen vigor.

I really don’t know why everyone who never played thief thinks that a thief has everything in one build. 10 different teleports, perma stealth, perma evade, perma regeneration while stealthed, perma this, perma that…
And not to forget: the skills have NO COOLDOWN!!!111 (because initiative isn’t a resource wich must be managed)

We are talking about the S/D set right now. A S/D thief relies on evades and teleports, like mentioned. He doesn’t have all the other things you mentioned.

The others classes have protection,vigor,block , high armor , high hp , CC, invul and other nasty stuff . The thief has stealth which is completly useless because you still get hit while in stealth .

Paulo.8459:

Thedenofsin.7340:

Ashanor.5319:

It’s fine. Watch the animatons.

#1)It’s got a 0.5 second cast time.

1. Watching the animations on an Asura thief…. yeah, not happening.

If you have 200ms of lag that means you have 300ms to react.
That’s pushing the limit of what the average person can visually react to.
Assuming the lag is proportional up and downstream, it takes 100ms for your reaction to register at the server. That leaves you 200ms of time to register an actionable reaction. That’s pushing the limit of what most humans can visually react to.

- Asura is the problem, not thief.
- lag is the problem, not thief.

Thedenofsin.7340:

evilapprentice.6379:

Thedenofsin.7340:

Those abilities aren’t tied to an unblockable boonsteal and also not on the same weapon as a 0 second cooldown shadowstep.

It needs to be nerfed. The game is getting bad enough with all these abilities requiring 0 skill to use. This needs to go.

Thieves rely on evasion and mobility to survive by design
-Lowest base HP pool
-No protection, aegis, or stability (No, daggerstorm does not count as a method to gain stability)
-Middle tier armor
-No blocks, no immunities, no psuedo-immunites (think zerkers stand/endure pain)
-Sub-par condition removal
- Our toughness traitline is entirely stealth reliant – there’s no point in trying to increase our survivability via points in this tree for specs that don’t use stealth constantly.

Boon stealing, lots of blinds, lots of stealth, lots of teleports, condition removal every time you shadowstep, every 3 seconds in stealth, low cooldown on heals, regen while stealthed, abundant access to vigor.

Thieves have tons of survivability. This ability is just broken.

Boon stealing? Yes.
Lots of blinds? No.
Lots of stealth? No.
Lots of teleports? Yes.
Condition removal on shadow step? No, actually on shadow return. Removes 1 condition for a total of 5 initiative.
Condition removal while stealthed? No.
Low cooldown on heals? Yes, but the heal with low cooldown heals for less.
Regeneration while stealthed? No.
Abundant access to vigor? Normally around 66% uptime, not counting eventually stolen vigor.

I really don’t know why everyone who never played thief thinks that a thief has everything in one build. 10 different teleports, perma stealth, perma evade, perma regeneration while stealthed, perma this, perma that…
And not to forget: the skills have NO COOLDOWN!!!111 (because initiative isn’t a resource wich must be managed)

We are talking about the S/D set right now. A S/D thief relies on evades and teleports, like mentioned. He doesn’t have all the other things you mentioned.

useless quote unless u show where he talks about a build. he just says the possible tools for survibility a thief has and can build or use. so yeah if s/d cant spam evade anymore u maybe need your brain to figure out how the get more surv. the same problems that every other class has.

Thedenofsin.7340:

evilapprentice.6379:

Thedenofsin.7340:

Those abilities aren’t tied to an unblockable boonsteal and also not on the same weapon as a 0 second cooldown shadowstep.

It needs to be nerfed. The game is getting bad enough with all these abilities requiring 0 skill to use. This needs to go.

Thieves rely on evasion and mobility to survive by design
-Lowest base HP pool
-No protection, aegis, or stability (No, daggerstorm does not count as a method to gain stability)
-Middle tier armor
-No blocks, no immunities, no psuedo-immunites (think zerkers stand/endure pain)
-Sub-par condition removal
- Our toughness traitline is entirely stealth reliant – there’s no point in trying to increase our survivability via points in this tree for specs that don’t use stealth constantly.

Boon stealing, lots of blinds, lots of stealth, lots of teleports, condition removal every time you shadowstep, every 3 seconds in stealth, low cooldown on heals, regen while stealthed, abundant access to vigor.

Thieves have tons of survivability. This ability is just broken.

You’re going to need to drop the hyperbole if you want people to take you seriously. Here, you’ve taken some things a bunch of different thief specs are capable of, and attributed them all to S/D, which just isn’t true.

-S/D has 1 way to blind – Tactical strike from the front. It is not used often. Utilities that blind also aren’t popular when running S/D
-As I’ve already pointed out, Stealth offers very little to an S/D build – it’s almost always used to gain access to a daze to interrupt a stomp or res. S/D has better tools for repositioning, and they don’t cost 6 initiative.
-You drop 1 condition every time you Shadow return, not every shadowstep. 1 condition for 5 init seems fair to me.
-Dropping conditions in stealth (which again, isn’t something S/D builds get much use out of) is from a trait in SA…a traitline which S/D doesn’t spec into
- Yes, withdraw has a low CD. While you are correct, you’ve done little to explain why it’s “So OP”
- Regen on stealth is Again something you get from SA (30 points in), and I’ve already explained how S/D thieves don’t use Stealth OR SA
-Yes, thieves do have abundant access to vigor – as you might have noticed, I mentioned that thieves survival mechanics are heavily reliant on evades – vigor being the only defensive boon thieves have abundant access to while having absolutely no in-class access to stability/protection/aegis seems fair to me.

If you can’t make your point without hyperbole, exaggeration, and lies, you don’t really have a point to begin with.

hooma.9642:

useless quote unless u show where he talks about a build. he just says the possible tools for survibility a thief has and can build or use. so yeah if s/d cant spam evade anymore u maybe need your brain to figure out how the get more surv. the same problems that every other class has.

This thread is about flanking strike/larcenous strike being overpowered, right?
There is no reason discussing about other specs, since the topic isn’t about other specs.

Your other argument also isn’t well thought-out. The key to survivability using the S/D set is evasion.

It’s like taking away deathshroud from the necro and then say: “well, now you dont have multiple health pools. Use your brain to figure out how to survive.”
It’s like taking away the control effects from the warrior’s hammer and then say: “well, now you can’t stunlock any more. Use you brain to figure out how to survive.”

Having multiple ways to get survivability doesn’t mean that every way is viable on every weaponset. It also doesn’t mean that you have all ways available at the same time.

well i think anet has to make a decision here though. either give the thief a lot of evades and nerf stealth or leave the permastealth in the game and remove the massive evades. imagine a thief with less stealth without the eveades….they would be very lost and very squishy. id rather have their stealth toned down than their evades.

if u want evades. fine, but then no dmg during evade!

selan.8354:

well i think anet has to make a decision here though. either give the thief a lot of evades and nerf stealth or leave the permastealth in the game and remove the massive evades. imagine a thief with less stealth without the eveades….they would be very lost and very squishy. id rather have their stealth toned down than their evades.

A stealthy thief doesn’t evade very much.
A evasive thief doesnt’t stealsh very much
A thief built for evasion AND stealth doesn’t kill anything and doesn’t contribute to the team at all.

Paulo.8459:

selan.8354:

well i think anet has to make a decision here though. either give the thief a lot of evades and nerf stealth or leave the permastealth in the game and remove the massive evades. imagine a thief with less stealth without the eveades….they would be very lost and very squishy. id rather have their stealth toned down than their evades.

A stealthy thief doesn’t evade very much.
A evasive thief doesnt’t stealsh very much
A thief built for evasion AND stealth doesn’t kill anything and doesn’t contribute to the team at all.

Nail head, meet hammer.
Nicely put Sir.

I think its funny how people still think this skill is broken. From when it was nerfed on Oct. 15, effectively the only thing changed now from April 30th, is the new ability Larcenous Strike, that did equal damage to the old Flanking Strike, as well they cleaned up the animation a bit.

What the OP is saying is that a skill that is hardly different from when it was underpowered and needed buffs is overpowered and grants perma evades. This is not true because of the chain of FS/LS. The perma evade comes from the Acro trait line.

Please for the almighty based god play the class before complaining about it, or at the very least have some semblance of knowledge of the class.

Baaaaaaaaaahahahahahahahahahaha

… Sorry could’t help it.

S/D thieves are so easy to counter… 4 month have passed since the S/D thief meta arrived, I’m amazed how so few ppl have learned how to do it…

EoNxBoNx.9213:

I think its funny how people still think this skill is broken. From when it was nerfed on Oct. 15, effectively the only thing changed now from April 30th, is the new ability Larcenous Strike, that did equal damage to the old Flanking Strike, as well they cleaned up the animation a bit.

What the OP is saying is that a skill that is hardly different from when it was underpowered and needed buffs is overpowered and grants perma evades. This is not true because of the chain of FS/LS. The perma evade comes from the Acro trait line.

Please for the almighty based god play the class before complaining about it, or at the very least have some semblance of knowledge of the class.

Doesn’t change the fact it is imbalanced – it’s just a different knob to adjust.

Thedenofsin.7340:

EoNxBoNx.9213:

I think its funny how people still think this skill is broken. From when it was nerfed on Oct. 15, effectively the only thing changed now from April 30th, is the new ability Larcenous Strike, that did equal damage to the old Flanking Strike, as well they cleaned up the animation a bit.

What the OP is saying is that a skill that is hardly different from when it was underpowered and needed buffs is overpowered and grants perma evades. This is not true because of the chain of FS/LS. The perma evade comes from the Acro trait line.

Please for the almighty based god play the class before complaining about it, or at the very least have some semblance of knowledge of the class.

Doesn’t change the fact it is imbalanced – it’s just a different knob to adjust.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview/first#post3133119

Go down to the thief section that is how they need to nerf thieves and it looks like it is going to be effective.

evilapprentice.6379:

Master of Timespace.2548:

It is somewhat overpowered yes. Damage reduction would be in place, but I want the boon removal back.

Please explain why you think the skill is OP. DPS is on par with Auto attack, and auto attack causes cripple and weakness. I think 5 init is fair to pay for an evade and a boon strip that does the same damage as pressing 1 close to your target.

Thieves rely on evasion and mobility to survive by design
-Lowest base HP pool
-No protection, aegis, or stability (No, daggerstorm does not count as a method to gain stability)
-Middle tier armor
-No blocks, no immunities, no psuedo-immunites (think zerkers stand/endure pain)
-Sub-par condition removal
- Our toughness traitline is entirely stealth reliant – there’s no point in trying to increase our survivability via points in this tree for specs that don’t use stealth constantly.

But they do have stealth and a heal that has no cast time, not to mention the many teleports they have access to. This particular build also has some access to stability through Lyssa runes and basilisk venom. When pondering whether if a build has to be shaved, it isn’t relevant what the class in question in general relies to. All that matters is if the build as whole is too powerful or not. However, when the actual nerf is done, then one of course has to consider that class in general so that balanced builds aren’t affected too much.

Stealth does not mitigate damage. It just makes you untargetable. It also prevents contesting points. It isn’t a very powerful tool for S/D because it costs 6 init to access, they generally don’t have any points in SA, and it doesn’t open up any strong options for them. 90% of the time, you’ll see an S/D thief stealth to interrupt a stomp/res/long casting time ability being used without stability.

Stealth does allow you to avoid damage however, and you don’t always need to contest a point to be useful. For example when assaulting a point, it isn’t necessarily important to be contesting the point all the time. In group fights it doesn’t matter at all as long as one of your party members is contesting the point. Shadow Refuge is also very powerful group utility.

Access to stability via rune choices is not the same as in-class access to stability. Also note, Lyssa runes are generally taken due to thieves inability to drop a large number of conditions in a short period of time – if you’re using it for stability, you’re not going to have it for condition cleansing.

As I pointed out, when pondering a possible shaving of a build, it is irrelevant how the build gets an access to a given ability. All that matters is if the build is too powerful or if it is not. How the build gets the access to it’s abilities is only relevant when discussing the correct way of shaving.

What is it that makes you feel that S/D is overpowered, and needs to be shaved?

I feel it’s too powerful and forgiving direct damage build when compared to that what other classes such as mesmer or elementalist have to offer. It is the combination of decent damage, extreme defense through evades and infinite disengages and hard-countering of positioning through sword 2 that makes it so powerful. It makes many other roaming professions and builds almost obsolete not only by itself being better than them in roaming, but also by being a hard counter against the said builds (eg. ele, shatter mesmer).

I don’t think the skill is imba…

That being said, I’m not so sure if I’d call it as part of the “class mechanic.” Stealth and initiative (being mostly no actual C/Ds on skills) is more of the mechanic. If played well you can escape on demand I’m not quite sure if I buy the whole “We need so many evades to liveeeee!” (That being said it makes more sense for thieves to have tons of evades compared to ranger…)