Guild Wars 2

Vault can be strafed out of without having to dodge at all. It’s like dragon’s tooth on ele. It can also be interrupted as the evasion only covers the front portion. Once people start playing against staff thieves more and learning to time their interrupts and not backpedal (admittedly difficult with what seems like so few thieves running around) it’s going to be harder to land them than now.

I just wanna do 5 digit backstabs I feel terrible when rev auto attack does more than a backstab with no revealed cooldowns.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

DeceiverX.8361:

I played the staff briefly. Vault’s damage is too oppressive as a DPS ability. Just need to expect what the opponent will be doing and it’s incredibly easy to land. Like using cloak and dagger on a stealthed enemy thief. Learn how to judge positioning and it makes matches easy. Built-in evades are icing and make it too safe.

Not sure I believe you.

Dunno what to tell you, then. I found the weapon rather corny with too big of an emphasis on the abuse of vault. Shadow Shot spam is pretty much the same thing, which is also why I refuse to play D/P; it’s too easy and makes the class when played optimally towards it a hell of a lot less fun, and is a big player in why I believe the class is deemed in an acceptable balance state just because of a few over-tuned abilities abusable by the initiative mechanic.

Tarkan.5609:

fumcheg.1936:

I think vault should cost 8 initiative because it deals damage as against Infiltrator’s Arrow! Even 6 ini is too OP!

For real though, I think backstab could use something but not a damage buff, I don’t like to see too many nuke abilities in any game generally.
It could steal a boon (and maybe deal extra dmg if no boon is stolen?), penetrate armor as stated above, STEAL HEALTH.

Yo, I think Tarkan is on to something here. What if instead of backstab getting a direct buff, it leeches hp? This would help our sustain and also apply lifesteal damage that would make Backstab hit harder. If this were to happen, making it have the sigil of leeching effect would be amazing. Would hit for about 1k damage and heal for about 1.2k or so.

I think giving HK a single condition cleanse per stealth attack would probably move HK into becoming a very viable trait while offering the thief good in-out condition removal and lack dependency on SE/SA for basic condition cleansing.

But that’s just me.