Guild Wars 2

I don’t play every class in this game. I haven’t picked up warrior. But, among all of every other class I play, I can’t think of a single trait line that is filled with as much impotent frustration as the acrobatics line. Whether it is redundant, ineffectual, or too situational to actually be useful, nearly every single trait in this line is junk. I would occasionally put a few additional points in acrobatics before the specialization update, but now I wouldn’t take the line if it were given for free. I will rate these traits on usefulness on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the best thing ever.

Expeditious Dodger
This trait is utterly useless, in that I can’t think if a single moment on any class in which a negligible amount of swiftness after dodging would have contributed meaningfully to anything ever. Thieves are already fast, and 2 seconds of swiftness on dodging will never make a difference. This trait might as well be blank, because at least a blank trait isn’t insulting.
1/10

Fleet of Shadow
This is Expeditious Dodger’s situational but much more useful friend. Again, thieves are already highly mobile, but at least when you take this trait you’ll notice a speed boost.
2/10

Pain Response
This trait is decent, mostly because Shadow’s Embrace was changed to no longer cleanse a condition immediately upon entering stealth. It doesn’t provide anything that is novel, since Hide in Shadows already cures the exact same conditions. The regeneration is meh, but at least it helps.
5/10

Vigorous Recovery
A minute amount of endurance upon using a heal skill. This isn’t anything special, considering that most classes either get perma-vigor, or 50% vigor up time from their respective adept traits. But since no sane person will blow their heal skill for vigor, you can consider this “restore 1/2th of a dodge upon healing”. The hard part is finding where this is useful: You have to be getting pummeled so hard that you need to dodge twice and heal, but not hard enough so the vigor can tick away, giving you some endurance back. But thieves already have a million ways out of that spot, and most of them rhyme with “stealth”.
3/10

Feline Grace
This trait isn’t bad. It is ranted about a lot on the forums, mostly because of how inferior it is compared to the previous feline grace, which was immediate and stacked with vigor instead of being vigor and was more potent, but at least this isn’t as disjointed as Vigorous Recovery. You actually need endurance after you dodge.
4/10

Guarded Initiation
What the heck is this trait trying to accomplish? Remove a bunch of completely unrelated non-damaging conditions when attacking, but only at near maximum health. Should you find the need to remove vulnerability and weakness, chances are it has already been pounded into your face, making it so this trait doesn’t trigger.
1/10

Hard to Catch
Now this is good. I don’t PVP that much anymore, but I can still see the value in a trait that nullifies a stun break and gives 2 more dodges every 30 seconds. Since people disable before the burst, this trait makes sure that not only are you not disabled, but you can dodge the burst, too.
8/10

Swindler’s Equilibrium
This is the most useless weapon related trait in the game. It very slowly incrementally reduces the recharge for steal only upon successful evasion. Unless you have a bunch of traits already packed on to steal, this is incredibly useless. In fact, it is incredibly useless even with a bunch of on steal traits, because it is unreliable and lacks any sort of potency.
1/10

Endless Stamina
This trait straddles the line between average and good, where “good” is defined as having a rating of 8 or higher. The wording is ambiguous, so I’ll explain the real effect: it caps out the endurance regen of vigor, putting it back to old numbers. So instead of gaining 7.5% endurance per second, you gain 10%. But, lets put this in reference: Under unboosted vigor, you get a dodge once every 6.67 seconds, but with Endless Stamina you get a dodge every 5 seconds. This trait, therefore, makes you dodge 33% more frequently… assuming permanent vigor. Which, with Feline Grace and Endless Stamina alone, thieves don’t get (time between dodges is 5 seconds maximum, only 4 seconds of vigor between dodges). But hey, bountiful theft becomes better.
6/10

Assassin’s Reward
Healing isn’t what thieves are known for, but lets do some math. Thieves regen initiative at 1 per second, and reward gives 69 healing per initiative spent. This comes 69 HP per second, which basically makes it the worst healing trait that thieves have. Beaten out by Signet of Malice, Invigorating Precision, Shadow’s Rejuvenation, and heck even Leeching Venoms if using two or more.
2/10

Don’t Stop
This isn’t too bad. Cutting cripple and Chill in half while negating 1 immobilize every 10 seconds isn’t that bad at all.
7/10

Upper Hand
Granted, I think it is better than Swindler’s Equilibrium, but not by much. I can see this contributing a bit to a fight, gaining one additional vigor every 6 seconds, more if using S/D or S/P, but even then I’m not sure such a minor contribution will really change all that much.
3/10

And that is it. One good trait. Three average traits, and all the rest are horrible. The sum of the contribution that the acrobatics line gives is about equivalent to Bountiful Theft. Wait, no, that would be lying, because Bountiful theft actually helps other players.

The acrobatics line gives the most minor of boosts to survival, and nothing else. No unique utility, no group support, no additional damage. Just selfish not-very-good survival. Every other line, on from what I can tell on every other class, does more than acrobatics. It is the worst line in the game.

You actually got endless stamina wrong. It boosts the effectiveness of vigor by 50%, so it’s actually 5(1+0.5×1.5) = 5×1.75=8.75. So that’s 1 dodge every 5.7 seconds, not every 5.

The rest of the assessment is good.

Here’s a way to fix it.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Fixing-Acrobatics/first#post5334031

Maugetarr.6823:

You actually got endless stamina wrong. It boosts the effectiveness of vigor by 50%, so it’s actually 5(1+0.5×1.5) = 5×1.75=8.75. So that’s 1 dodge every 5.7 seconds, not every 5.

The rest of the assessment is good.

Are you sure? Though I’m not an egg timer, when I tested it out on my thief it gave half a bar in 5 seconds.

evilapprentice.6379:

Here’s a way to fix it.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Fixing-Acrobatics/first#post5334031

The problem with your listed changes is that the line is still full of useless stuff that players have to take, making it still subpar overall. I’m still going with Pain Response, Hard to Catch, and Don’t Stop under those changes.

I guess this is as good a time as any to list my changes.

#1: Drop expeditious dodger completely. Feline Grace becomes the new adept minor
#2: Endless Stamina becomes master minor. Don’t Stop becomes grandmaster minor
#3: Change Fleet of Shadow to: Granting Stealth to you or your allies also grants swiftness. 10 second swiftness duration, 15 second ICD.
#4: Pain Response now affects confusion and torment.
#5: Vigorous Recovery: This now cleanses one condition in an AoE.
#6: Double the base heal and scale healing of assassin’s reward, and make its heal an AoE with 360 range. Max 5 targets.
#7: Merge Swindler’s Equilibrium and Upper Hand, so now evades while wielding a sword both recharge steal and regain initiative, 1 second ICD. Add 5% damage bonus, and keep at the master tier.
#8: Move Hard To Catch to the Grandmaster Tier
#9: Changed Guarded Initiation to the following: Activate Assassin’s Signet when attacking a foe above a certain health threshold (90%). 45 second cooldown, and receives benefits from signet related traits.
#10: New Grandmaster Trait: Richochet. You all know what it does.

You’ll notice this leaves an open spot in the master tier. Because I lack creativity, I’ll have to leave that open for someone with better imagination to fill. Truth be told I also don’t know what to do about vigorous recovery.

Overall, the person who “re-designed” the trait line was completely drunk when he was working on it. cough cough the screw up who forgot the trait names during livestream. cough dipkitten. Potent poison! Hah! That made me kitten when they first showed it during livestream.

I disagree with hard to catch 8/10 rating.

Yes on paper this trait looks good, but using it is different.

1. This trait will never restore 2 dodges. To do so, you have to eat cc exactly after your 2nd dodge which will never happens.

2. You get interrupted anyway.

3. It triggers really often against meaningless stuns, and against many classes really early while your endurance is somewhat full.

And don’t stop is only good in non S/D acro build, and afaik they don’t exist anymore.

Upper Hand on the other side is imo somewhat useful. It is 2-3 initiative in 10-12 seconds. But only useful for S/D.

My ratings are subjective. I gave it an 8/10 because Hard to Catch is good enough to make me consider taking acrobatics just to have it. I’m a fairly low-skill PVPer myself, and those “activate upon being stunned” traits save my life over and over, time and again. As far as activate when stunned traits go, Hard to Catch is really good. Not as good as Protection Injection, but definitely above Hide in Plain Sight and Retaliatory Subconscious.

Don’t stop falls into the same category for the same reason. Somewhere along the way the entire thief board got this notion in their head that the acrobatics line exists just to supplement a single weapon set. That is bad design, which is why every other specialization in the game doesn’t do it. Either you make everything nigh useless, terrified that it’ll culminate into an unstoppable beast, or you nerf the weapon set to the point where you can’t use it without the specialization.

Acro used to supplement D/D condi, P/P (no other form of mitigation), S/D, P/D if running caltrops on dodge. Now it is just good for mitigating cc, which we could previously condi cleanse in stealth for, withdraw, shadow step, IR etc. The fact that evades were cut in half impacts much more than S/D

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

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I guess this is as good a time as any to list my changes.

#1: Drop expeditious dodger completely. Feline Grace becomes the new adept minor
#2: Endless Stamina becomes master minor. Don’t Stop becomes grandmaster minor
#3: Change Fleet of Shadow to: Granting Stealth to you or your allies also grants swiftness. 10 second swiftness duration, 15 second ICD.
#4: Pain Response now affects confusion and torment.
#5: Vigorous Recovery: This now cleanses one condition in an AoE.
#6: Double the base heal and scale healing of assassin’s reward, and make its heal an AoE with 360 range. Max 5 targets.
#7: Merge Swindler’s Equilibrium and Upper Hand, so now evades while wielding a sword both recharge steal and regain initiative, 1 second ICD. Add 5% damage bonus, and keep at the master tier.
#8: Move Hard To Catch to the Grandmaster Tier
#9: Changed Guarded Initiation to the following: Activate Assassin’s Signet when attacking a foe above a certain health threshold (90%). 45 second cooldown, and receives benefits from signet related traits.
#10: New Grandmaster Trait: Richochet. You all know what it does.

You’ll notice this leaves an open spot in the master tier. Because I lack creativity, I’ll have to leave that open for someone with better imagination to fill. Truth be told I also don’t know what to do about vigorous recovery.

I don’t mean to be rude, but all you’ve done is add damage to a defensive line. The very minor defensive buffs you’ve included do nothing to mitigate the fact that thieves still have access to roughly half the dodges they did pre-patch.

evilapprentice.6379:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

---

I guess this is as good a time as any to list my changes.

#1: Drop expeditious dodger completely. Feline Grace becomes the new adept minor
#2: Endless Stamina becomes master minor. Don’t Stop becomes grandmaster minor
#3: Change Fleet of Shadow to: Granting Stealth to you or your allies also grants swiftness. 10 second swiftness duration, 15 second ICD.
#4: Pain Response now affects confusion and torment.
#5: Vigorous Recovery: This now cleanses one condition in an AoE.
#6: Double the base heal and scale healing of assassin’s reward, and make its heal an AoE with 360 range. Max 5 targets.
#7: Merge Swindler’s Equilibrium and Upper Hand, so now evades while wielding a sword both recharge steal and regain initiative, 1 second ICD. Add 5% damage bonus, and keep at the master tier.
#8: Move Hard To Catch to the Grandmaster Tier
#9: Changed Guarded Initiation to the following: Activate Assassin’s Signet when attacking a foe above a certain health threshold (90%). 45 second cooldown, and receives benefits from signet related traits.
#10: New Grandmaster Trait: Richochet. You all know what it does.

You’ll notice this leaves an open spot in the master tier. Because I lack creativity, I’ll have to leave that open for someone with better imagination to fill. Truth be told I also don’t know what to do about vigorous recovery.

I don’t mean to be rude, but all you’ve done is add damage to a defensive line. The very minor defensive buffs you’ve included do nothing to mitigate the fact that thieves still have access to roughly half the dodges they did pre-patch.

I added far more than that. Group swiftness on stealth, AoE Healing, Don’t Stop baseline, and AoE condi cleanse. Also, by giving the upper-hand merge a 1 second ICD, this allows for greater initiative regen with the sword, which itself will allow for more dodges.

Besides, there’s still an empty trait hole. If dodges are really that important to you, just add some miscellaneous vigor trait on the master tier.

It’s almost like they have no paradigm or control schema for designing skills and traits whatsoever and just fly by the seat of their pants.

Don’t use acro? It’s useless unless you are maybe in wvw.

swinsk.6410:

Don’t use acro? It’s useless unless you are maybe in wvw.

That’s really not how balance works. If something sucks, you improve it. You don’t just leave it to fester.

swinsk.6410:

Don’t use acro? It’s useless unless you are maybe in wvw.

What Blood said.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

swinsk.6410:

Don’t use acro? It’s useless unless you are maybe in wvw.

That’s really not how balance works. If something sucks, you improve it. You don’t just leave it to fester.

…but what can WE do about that, aside from venting in the forums (when it has been proved that Devs rarely listen to us anyway? I mean, even though Devs said that they were looking into the old “Last Refuge” trait, it took them 3 years to actually “fix” it)?

What swinsk said is correct. For the time being just stop using Acrobatics. It is just a worthless traitline. I played yesterday against some classes and I could literally go without it and it would feel the same.

hihey.1075:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

swinsk.6410:

Don’t use acro? It’s useless unless you are maybe in wvw.

That’s really not how balance works. If something sucks, you improve it. You don’t just leave it to fester.

…but what can WE do about that, aside from venting in the forums (when it has been proved that Devs rarely listen to us anyway? I mean, even though Devs said that they were looking into the old “Last Refuge” trait, it took them 3 years to actually “fix” it)?

What swinsk said is correct. For the time being just stop using Acrobatics. It is just a worthless traitline. I played yesterday against some classes and I could literally go without it and it would feel the same.

^^^
Yeah, if you want more dodges on demand now, trait CS with Signets of Power and take Signet of Agility. You get the extra damage from the line and better, more controllable endurance regen.

I’m going have to agree that acro is probably the worst trait line i have seen in awhile.

From a pvp standpoint:
What arena net failed to understand is sometimes you had to chain dodges. I’m all for active dodging but This game is flooded with AOE, High damage channel skills (Vs squishy thief’s anyway) and random proc’s. When you boil it down, thief simply lacks enough damage to down a target (s/d) when you trait Acro. You do not have enough evades to live long enough to down an opponent.

Highlie.7641:

I’m going have to agree that acro is probably the worst trait line i have seen in awhile.

From a pvp standpoint:
What arena net failed to understand is sometimes you had to chain dodges. I’m all for active dodging but This game is flooded with AOE, High damage channel skills (Vs squishy thief’s anyway) and random proc’s. When you boil it down, thief simply lacks enough damage to down a target (s/d) when you trait Acro. You do not have enough evades to live long enough to down an opponent.

My concern mainly is that, as a defensive line, acrobatics is really poor at it. Compare it to Shadow Arts, the other defensive line.

Merciful Ambush: Has use in PVE to drop aggro of a hyper focused enemy. Thieves aren’t that bad at reviving, though, so it gets bonus points.
4/10

Concealed Defeat: Good defense trait in teams. Makes stomping harder, blocks projectiles, makes rezzing easier. Also increases deceptions, which are all really useful defensive skills for the thief.
7/10

Last Refuge: This is a mixed trait. On the one hand, it can save you. On the other hand, it can kill you.
3/10

Shadow’s Embrace: Currently bugged, but this makes an excellent condition cleanse, making the dubious task of condi pressure against a thief even more difficult.
8/10 once unbugged.

Meld With Shadows: Usually buys 33% more time in stealth. Given all of the stealth utilities in this trait line, it basically makes everything better.
7/10

Hidden Thief: This trait is a mixed bag. It conflicts with other traits, and usually you’ll just chain Cloak ’n Dagger to steal for stealth anyway. But still, not completely useless
3/10

Shadow Protector: Thieves aren’t known for their healing, but this is alright. Due to the slow nature of Shadow’s Embrace, this helps with condi damage. Also works on groups.
5/10

Leeching Venoms: This is part of the venom duo that a lot of PVE and WvW builds use. This is a solid trait overall in that it gives might for damage, leeching for damage, and also surprisingly substantial amount of healing.
8/10

Resilience of Shadows: Though the function of stealth is to avoid damage, this really helps against those random cleaves that people throw out when they know you’re around. Also works on allies.
7/10

Cloaked in Shadows: This is pretty decent. You can trigger minutes amount of fall damage to escape, and this provides additional defense when using stealth.
7/10

Shadow’s Rejuvenation: The healing it provides is substantial, the initiative is minute but adds up over time. Combined with all other stealth traits and you’ll be getting around 420 HP / Second with condi cleansing, and reduced damage, making a stealth spamming thief much tankier than they appear to be.
7/10

Venomous Aura: This is what you play thieves for. As a group trait goes, this is monstrously dangerous. Combined with Leeching Venoms it is an AoE might stack + substantial heal + substantial damage. This turns venoms from “nice bonuses” to “OH SHISH KABOB”. In condi builds, Spider and Skale venom do immense damage and vulnerability. In all builds, Devourer Venom and Basilisk Venom lock people down. Skelk Venom Provides even more group healing. With Chill changes, Ice Drake Venom has fallen from grace.
10/10