Guild Wars 2

Thief:
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Also we are trying to improve the survivability of thieves in the Acrobatics line through easier access to the Hard to Catch trait and increased effectiveness of the Assassin’s Reward trait.
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Unfortunately, it appears to me that these efforts did not have their intended effect.
Some observations and a question to the Devs.

Hard to catch
This trait is basically a handicap in trait form. Being moved in a random direction, for a random distance when hit with a CC, Even if you have stability, and most importantly at the whim of another player, does not increase survivability.

It’s disorienting, can force you off points, and doesn’t even clear the control effect. The range as well is much too short to be useful – being moved a maximum of 600 away from the target that CC’d you does almost nothing . Any melee class can close that gap in a second, and every non-thief has access to 1200 range (or better) weapons.

Generally in most MMO’s, being moved by an effect you don’t initiate or control would be considered a CC effect, not anything positive. How did Anet envision this increasing thief survivability?

Assassin’s Reward
This change has 2 problems.

• It’s a change in healing power scaling.
  What thief has room in their build for healing power? Perhaps a Venom share build dedicated to healing their teammates and doing almost no damage themselves might find use in stacking high healing power, but Venom share doesn’t have 30 points for the acro line anyway, so it’s a moot point.

• 35% more healing power scaling equates to 1 additional point of health healed per init spent for every 100 healing power you have, when compared to pre Dec 10th AR.
  How did this math justify a bump from Master to Grand master? The trait wasn’t a strong trait when it was in the Master tier, and the buff is mathematically insignificant. How could someone crunch the numbers, see what an insignificant effect that this change was going to have, and still push it through as a buff?

Could someone from Anet come and have a discussion with us, concerning how thieves are supposed to use these acrobatics changes to increase survivability? Failing that (I honestly can’t think of an argument that would sway me into beleiving these changes increased survivability), could we discuss how to change/improve them in the next patch so that thief has some options for survivability via the Acrobatics traitline, as you intended?