Guild Wars 2

There are a lot of abilities that have been converted to baseline on other classes while we only had venom charges becoming baseline.

here are some abilities that i would desire see as baseline :

Quick pocket: 3 initiative on weapon swap , this would help us use the short bow more effectively or even be able to use this as an advantage when having same weapons equipped.

Bountiful Theft : this ability should have been baseline to give steal some functionality other than an ability gain.

if not BT then Mug should be baseline for the same reason.

Fleet shadow: no one will pick it up might as well change it with something that can contend with Pain response or make it baseline.

Upper hand: should be baseline as we need more initiative regen.

Clocked in shadow: the blind on stealth on this ability should be baseline giving Dagger dagger a chance to compete.

if none of the initiative gain abilities is baseline then why not give us the extra initiative from trickery so other options are used instead of it. currently a build without trickery is just unmanageable as it would reduce your skill per second use compared to the short CD that other classes got on their new weapons.

The way I see it if we get preparedness baseline and then 6 ini when swapping to a weapon different from the set you are currently wielding then we wouldn’t really have many initiative problems and then we wouldn’t be required to take trickery for the initiative.

Cloaked in shadow should only be a baseline on CnD, if it goes past that then other sets will still outperform d/d and really the extra blind spam is unnecessary for the game. Fleet shadow is just out of place in that line, combining it into another ability may work but there’s no reason to make it baseline as then d/p would be way too powerful in pvp due to having bigger mobility than s/d. (assuming I am correct in my memory that fleet shadow is +50% movement speed in stealth)

With my previous swap idea, upper hand is not necessary and would actually be plain broken if combined with initiative on swap.

BT baseline would be too much. Yes in this boon heavy meta it feels necessary but it’s not needed for basic functionality of steal. The only thing I could comfortably back would be heal from mug and/or sleight of hand as a baseline (and even that is pushing it). Boon rip on steal as baseline would just kill trickery line as there would be no more reason to invest into it. Remember, the goal is to balance the professions, not cause more power creep as that will just kill the game over time. Trickster is a good competitor with BT and it should remain that way. If more boon hate is to be implemented they need to put 2 boons stolen for full stacks and duration on larcenous strike.

Ario.8964:

…Remember, the goal is to balance the professions, not cause more power creep as that will just kill the game over time. …

Thank you. Someone finally is getting it.

Core thief has 2 issues right now

Complete garbage defensive lines (yes, even SA)
“Must have” traits leaving almost no room for spec variety.

Let’s try to resolve this.

Baseline traits -some traits need to be made baseline (in some form) to give thieves actual options in trait choices.

Mug – Make the heal portion of mug a part of base steal. the “Mug” trait now reads “Steal does damage (Same coefficient as now) and grants 5 stacks of might for 8 seconds”

Preparedness – Made baseline. There isn’t a thief PvPing today that doesn’t have 15 initiative, it’s almost as if our skills are balanced around that fact. Replace it with whatever.

Bountiful theft – Steal now steals 2 boons and applies them to thief only. Bountiful theft now reads “Steal also grants vigor and applies the boons to allies within the radius” so traited BT is exactly as it is now.

Sleight of hand – Remove the 20% additional steal CD. Lower steal’s CD to 25s base, and increase the CD reduction of Lead attacks to 20%, so steal without trickery is 25s and steal with trickery is 20s. This one probably seems the most extreme, but the bottom line is SO much of thieves power and traits are tied into steal that a trait that lowers it an additional 20% is basically mandatory. It needs to be remedied.

SA – The incentive to stay in stealth needs to be removed entirely, for the games health in both PvP and WvW. Swap “meld with shadows” with the first minor slot, and add "Gain ‘Lingering Shadows’ while revealed’. The idea here is protect thieves in between stealth uses, discourage stealth camping, and give SA powerful benefits that are tied to good play, and counter-able by the enemy at the same time.

Shadows embrace – Remove 1 damaging condition on entering stealth. While under the effects if Lingering Shadows, landing a strike against an enemy grants resistance for 1.25s, 1s ICD

Shadow protector – When entering stealth, gain 6 seconds of regeneration. While under the effects of Lingering Shadows, landing a strike against an enemy grants Aegis for 1.5s, 4s ICD

Shadow rejuvenation – When entering stealth, Heal for X. While under the effects of Lingering Shadows, landing a strike against an enemy heals for Y, 1s ICD.

Cloaked in shadow – Same as it is currently, add While under the effects of Lingering Shadows, landing a strike against an enemy grants 1.25s of protection, 1s ICD

Acrobatics – I’m not going to go into detail, but same idea as I laid out with SA – successfully evading an attack grants some defensive buff/effect for 1-3s, with a 3s ICD – the longer ICD is designed to punish evade spamming, and turn Acro into a traitline that protects thieves in between dodges, so dodging attacks isn’t their 1 and only defensive mechanism from Acro.

I really like your ideas evilapprentice. But daredevil does exactly what you Want acro to so. I mean…those buffs to dodges should be in acro like before acro nerf…and daredevil should get something else than enhancing dodges or wnb acro 2.0.
But since This wont increase anets income, they wont do any big changes. I expect some minor buffs to venoms (again) , some little putput for traps (kittening again). And some cheap number tweaks for daredevil.
Acro does not even exist.

Domey.9804:

I really like your ideas evilapprentice. But daredevil does exactly what you Want acro to so. I mean…those buffs to dodges should be in acro like before acro nerf…and daredevil should get something else than enhancing dodges or wnb acro 2.0.
But since This wont increase anets income, they wont do any big changes. I expect some minor buffs to venoms (again) , some little putput for traps (kittening again). And some cheap number tweaks for daredevil.
Acro does not even exist.

Daredevil has a couple of things (Driven fortitude and Escapists absolution basically) that overlap, but it’s a much different line. It’s got a mix of offensive, utility and defensive abilities in each tier, and most of them are not contingent on successfully evading an attack.

Acro would look more like this

Pain response – successfully evading an attack grants 4s of regen and cleanses 1 damaging condition (5s icd)

Feline grace – successfully evading an attack grants 3 stacks of “graceful strikes”. Landing an attack consumes 1 stack of graceful strikes, restores X endurance (3 or 4) and grants 2 seconds of retaliation. 3s ICD, Max 3 stacks (charges are expended exactly like venoms)

Guarded initiation – successfully evading an attack grants 3s of stability (1 stack),3s ICD

Don’t Stop – successfully evading an attack grants 2 seconds of superspeed, resistance and quickness, 4s ICD.

Steal should cleasne 1 condition. And Bountiful theft should have something like “if there are no nearby teammates to give boons to, apply 2 random conditions to your opponent”

Steal could be a “true” stunbreaker – baseline. With all the dazes and stuns flying around…

@herzeleid yes it could… but then you have even more powercreep and higher potential for thief nerfs cause of complaints that thief has too many stunbreaks etc. Happened to sword 2, don’t want it happening to steal as well. What really needs to happen is the amount of cc flying around needs to be reduced heavily as perma cc is bad for the game.

evilapprentice.6379:

Domey.9804:

I really like your ideas evilapprentice. But daredevil does exactly what you Want acro to so. I mean…those buffs to dodges should be in acro like before acro nerf…and daredevil should get something else than enhancing dodges or wnb acro 2.0.
But since This wont increase anets income, they wont do any big changes. I expect some minor buffs to venoms (again) , some little putput for traps (kittening again). And some cheap number tweaks for daredevil.
Acro does not even exist.

Daredevil has a couple of things (Driven fortitude and Escapists absolution basically) that overlap, but it’s a much different line. It’s got a mix of offensive, utility and defensive abilities in each tier, and most of them are not contingent on successfully evading an attack.

Acro would look more like this

Pain response – successfully evading an attack grants 4s of regen and cleanses 1 damaging condition (5s icd)

Feline grace – successfully evading an attack grants 3 stacks of “graceful strikes”. Landing an attack consumes 1 stack of graceful strikes, restores X endurance (3 or 4) and grants 2 seconds of retaliation. 3s ICD, Max 3 stacks (charges are expended exactly like venoms)

Guarded initiation – successfully evading an attack grants 3s of stability (1 stack),3s ICD

Don’t Stop – successfully evading an attack grants 2 seconds of superspeed, resistance and quickness, 4s ICD.

I would rather not see too many benefits accrue to one element in the game in this case on evade or people are shoehorned into loading up on the evades to maximize potential and then too much accrues from one thing.

As example assuming we have as you suggest then on every evade (barring ICD) one can get healing, a condition clease (DD line) superpseed resistance , stability , quickness , endurance regen , retaliation, regen and another condition cleanse. It too much when people double up (DD LINE Acro line) , and they will.

Now one problem as I see it is the devs took the approach that SA and Acro should be defensive lines and outside might from venoms in SA there little in the lines that add offensive potential. At the same time the defensive line sof other classes are not restricted in such a manner.

I would much rather see enhancements to our shadowstep abilities and or a few ON interrupt traits such as “On interrupt lose two conditions” or “On interrupt gain resistance for 5 seconds”. One focusing on shadowsteps can have access to “all shadowsteps gain 200 range” or “gain 5 stacks might on shadowstep for 8 seconds”

This way you can garner diferent flavor of theif rather then one loading up on evade benefits or stealth benefits.

Although I very much hope for the current “powercreep” meta as it is called to get nerved as a whole too, I don’t see an additional stunbreak every 30sec (20sec if traited) actually adding to it.

Big difference to sword 2: it’s spamable (at least for a while)!

I don’t really see Anet reducing the amount of dazes and stuns they just introduced to the game though (unfortunately! I whish they never introduced that much CC.)

That being said, Thief in my opinion needs some kind of “buffs” to really be viable have fun and challenging fights, also 1 vs 1: I’d prefer additional survivability to yet more damage (powercreep).

The complete Thief needs a fundamental redesign of all of its Traits and Skills.

The Thief kitten many way too important must have traits to be viable, that you can’t say this class has any real build diversity, if you want to be competitive in the current meta due to all other classes having received lately so extreme much power creep plus the terrible condition overbuff from the stupid june 23rd patch without Anret having done absolutely anything at all about this for the defensive part of the game as a counter balance.
Its absolutely no miracle, that the balance of this game breaks together like a house of cards, when you permanently overbuff only always all the offensive thigns in this game, but never accordingly appropiately rebalance also all the defensive mechanics like Base Health becoming for each class individually balanced instead of type settings that get shared among multiple classes.
Like finally fixing the efficiency of Vitality and Toughness to become more effective, that you actually have alot more trouble with direct damage against someone who has really high toughness and vitality who plays a kind of tanky build, so that fightign against such players finally feel more like fightign against such super high defensive mordrem, who you can effectively kill only with damaging conditions because they ignore the defense.

The thief sasly brigns currently way too less to the table, than that they are considered by non-thief players as valuable party members to want to get. Thats somethign what must get changed.
The thief must become equally as good/useful for a group like a Revenant or an Elementalist, so that people will always say that “oki good, we couldn’t get in time a Rev/Ele, then the thief is also a very good alternative. Point”

And for this to happen ever, the thief needs to receive in many of its core aspects in my opinion a complete redesign.

1) Stealth needs to become the absolute unrivaled best thing on thieves, its their core gameplay mechanic number 1, they are the stealth grandmasters, nobody else should be here in this more superior, than them!!

2) Mobility needs to become the absolute unrivaled best thing on thieves, nobody, especially not anythign in heavy armors should be EVER able to catch or even outrun simply a thief. EVER!!! Its the god darn role to be the fastest and most mobile class of all. if there is just one class, that should compete with thieves there, then just only the Ele when attuned to air, but absolutely no other class

3) Venomshare needs to become baseline, too mandatory just to get some group support besides of stealth. But better would be, if Venoms just become themself an exchangeable F3/4 skill, so that you can take always two venoms with you that you automaticalyl share with everyone when you use them and Venoms as utility skill get completely exhcnaged with somethign better and more overall useful

4) Alot of Signets and Tricks should get merged together with some Trait Effects to create space for more useful new Signets, Tricks and Traits

5) The Thief needs to receive overall in all Weapon Sets more Boon Stealing, Boon Stealing should become one of the theives most best key roles that they constantly try to steal something from their enemies, whenever they get a chance on it

6) The Thief needs to receive back some options of Initiative Regain

7) The Trait Lines need to be redesigned so, that all lines are in themself useful, this means Acrobatics needs to receive its former glory back, Daredevil needs to be redesigned so that it isnt just Acrobatics 2.0, but just in everythign better.
The 3 endurance bars need to be baseline for thief, Daredevil needs to receive something else to become special.
The Dodge Arts should become a toggleable F5 key that enables the daredevil to change outside of combat their Dodge Arts. The Daredevil needs to receive some real grandmaster traits, not some features, that are locked behind the grandmaster traits, while all other classes receive with their elite specs some good new grandmaster effects and the thief gets nothing, other than somethign, that should be seen as a baselined different class mechanic that should come automatically by becomign a daredevil and not something, for that you need to get first a grandmaster trait just to become able to use the different dodge arts.
The different dodge arts need to be something that Daredevils should be directly able to use the very moment you become a daredevil.

8.) Daze/Stun andDodge and Evade frames need to get buffed to become more equal with that of other skills from other classes and make especialyl the evade frames cover finalyl over the whole skill animations, like for example for Death Blossom which should let you evade attacks for the full time of its aninmation until you land with your feet on the ground again and stand normally again

Core Mechanics Changes that the Thief should get:

Shortbow
-1200 Range again on Shortbow (at least for the Auto Attack)
- Cluster Bomb should move 33-50% faster, takes so age long until you hit with it, way too easy to avoid.
- Detonate Cluster should cause also Burning and stronger Vulnerability!! Hello?, we let it explode all around our enemies!!!
- Undetonated Cluster Bomb should deal significantly more damage, so more enemies are in its area of effect to give it more crowd control to prevent enemies from stacking, so that when you see it coming, that you want absolutely not to stay together at the spot where it will land.
- Choking Gas: Should Stun enemies that stand longer than 2 seconds in it and should cause Torment instead of Poison (A trait for it should let it cause Poison, whenever the thief causes torment to a foe, that they get also poisoned, that should synergy then also with the trait, that weakens foes, if they get poisoned)
- Infiltrators Arrow: Should Steal Boons from nearby enemies around you at your target location. Using Infiltrators Arrow onto an enemy, should work like Steal, but just without receiving a Steal Skill, so that IA can be used also offensively and not only as a Mobility Skill in 99% of all cases. (With Mug it will deal then also damage and heals you and maybe in case of IA for group support heals also nearby allies maybe)

Sword
- Auto Attack Part 3
Crippling Strike gets renamed to Nightshade Strike and will steal 2 Boons now
- Tactical Strike gets renamed to “Shadow Stalker” and receives to its current effect also the effect, that it will percentually recharge your Steal by 20%
- Infiltrators Strike: The Nerfs on it get reverted, you return now again instantly.
Range increased from 600 to 900 and it will remove now 2 Conditions and not only 1
- Flanking Strike gets renamed to Larcerous Flanking to finally fix its double name with a trait and the skill becomes one, not anymore two parts with 4 initiative Cost total.
Will deal extra damage now, if you atack with it enemies that have no boons.
- Pistol Whip: The stun of its hit becomes increased from 0,5s to 1,5s so that you can hit all 9 attacks, before the stun is already over, if the enemy has no stun breaker ready.
Damage gets increased by 20% to become a bit more on par with 100B therefore that you get rooted too. And fix finally the Evade Skill fact here..you fixed already so many missing skill facts and this one gets ignored all the time?
- Thief should receive baseline two 2 sword skills by addign Offhand Sword to them.
I absolutely dont see this beign added as part of an Elite Specialization.
That would be wasted potential.
- New 3) Blade Dance – Perform a leaping whirling dance of blades with your Dual Swords with that you will deal damage to all targets in line and cause for everyone also 1 stack of bleedign for every foe that you have hit with this attack. So if you hit 5 targets, everyone will receive at the end of the attack 5 stacks of bleedings. If you hit more targets, then also more stacks of bleedings.
- Offhand 4) Deadly Counter – Block incoming attacks for several seconds, to perform with shadows from you deadly fast counterattacks for every attack that you blocked that repell the same damage and effects back, that you would normally have received if your enemies atatck would have hit you.
- Offhand 5) Assassination – Stealth yourself for 5 seconds and gain Super Speed. Increases in these 5 seconds for all nearby allies including you their Ferocity by x* their level(+250 Max). With Assination you can attack 1x without getting revealed, while wielding Dual Swords, just the second Stealth Attack will reveal you first.
So if you use Assassination for example to get Stealth through it, you could attack a target within the 5 seconds for example 2x with Shadow Stalker and regain this way 40% of your Steal Recharge back, before you get revealed on second hit.
Or use Assassination as Preparation Assault to swap then quickly after the first hit to D/D and backstab then with the second hit, after the the first Shadow Stalker dazed your foe, making it this way a bit easier for you to land the backstab, giving your S/S – D/D Build a bit more synergy this way.

Dagger
- Heartseeker should get its range increased to 600 and work like the Warriors Whirlwindattack by receiving a line of sight arrow mechanic with that you can easier change your directions of your heartseekers, especialyl when using it quickly multiple times, so that the thief can become with HS like a quickly direction changing rabbit that can make quick Z-Moves with it then for example until intitiative runs out.
With this change woudl become HS a much better reactive skill with that you can hunt down better then also quickly direction changing enemies without needign to have them in target lock.
- Death Blossom: As said, its Evasive Frame needs to get fixed and increased and it should deal imo a few hits/few stacks of bleeding more. Raise it from 3 to 5 and also raise the number of Targets from 3 to 5 to make D/D a bit more equal with Staff
- Dancing Daggers should get its nerfs reverted and should be unblockable to give Thieves with it a Skill with that can can penetrate through the defense of bunkers, especialyl when theres somethign from where they can bounce off to hit the bunkers multiple times.
- Cloak and Dagger – Should blind enemies additionally and give 5 Stacks of Vulnerability instead of 3 and put you directly in stealth without requiring to hit. reduce the cost to 5 Initiative. therefore it has lesser duration than Assassination and makes you not move faster and allows you not to hit twice from stealth before getting revealed.

Pistol
- Add a trait with that you can increase the range of it and shortbows AA from 900 to 1200)
- Vital Shot – remove the bleedings and add to it a damage modifier that lets it deal more damage, so more health the enemy has, especially if it has more health, than you at them moment.
- Body Shot – Change it from immobilize to a short ranged knockback that interrupts foes which causes Bleedings
- Unload – baseline ricochet into it, that all shots have a chance to bounce to nearby targets and rename the skill to “Bullet Storm”
- Head Shot – add Confusion Stacks and Weakness to it, if you successfully interrupt a foe with it.
- Black Powder – Increase its radius size by 50% and make its number of targets infinite, everyone who steps in it shoudl get blinded while its up for its 4 seconds. Increase its damage by like 200% so that it actually can be used also good offensively for its big initiative cost, it shoudl be more than just only a blind/stealth utility.

Staff
- Staff Bash, should have a side effetc, instead of beign just a borign second AA hit, Staff Bash should give you 3 Might Stacks for 20s
- Weakening Charge, same treatment as liek with Heart Seeker, should receive a line of sight arrow mechanic with that you can quickly change the direction of attack, before you perform it. Its range should get increased from 450 to 600
- Debilitatign Arc – should launch the enemy also away from you
- Dust Strike – should leave a blinding field trail for a few seconds, so that it can have more synergy with vault by vaulting into the field to get stealth to finish your attack combo then with a hook strike
- Vault: should give you Resistance while performing it

So far my thoughts, what Anet should do about the weapon skills currently

Lots of good ideas, but stick with me here.

25% move speed

I’m not even joking. We have a lot of stuff that’s super positional. We need better baseline move speed that doesn’t take up a utility or trait slot.

I think the trickery trait line should be baseline aka → prepareness, thrill of the crime, bountiful theft and sleight of hand.

I’m not sure thief needs a lot of things baseline as much as it is that our utilities, traits, and skills should be stronger. The thing with changing base thief is that it acts as a buff to every build ever conceived, which means that making build diversity would require tweaking every potential “strong” skill down just to compensate. It is a lot of work to put in.

I do prefer spot balances. Anet has been dragging their feet with specific changes, because they fear the infamous “invincible perfect thief” might come back, and because of this we’re effectively receiving no balance of any kind.

I’d baseline:-

1 Movement speed.

2 Flanking damage bonus.

Hard numbers would have to be play-tested, and ideally with different numbers for PvE and PvP. For #2, this is from a few ideas I’ve read on this forum: We should be the bunker-buster class, and the damage buff could be ‘When flanking, on crit % chance, penetrating attack’ that scales linearly with how well the target is protected.

Thematic, gives us a purpose, and it’s extra damage (that other squishy class PvP targets won’t be much affected by) that we have to work and play well for.

For #1, making the movement speed buff baseline simplifies everything; otherwise we ‘masters of speed…’ (regardless of which weapon we choose) should have it in the trait lines at the very least… but that would be really messy to implement.

babazhook.6805:

evilapprentice.6379:

Domey.9804:

I really like your ideas evilapprentice. But daredevil does exactly what you Want acro to so. I mean…those buffs to dodges should be in acro like before acro nerf…and daredevil should get something else than enhancing dodges or wnb acro 2.0.
But since This wont increase anets income, they wont do any big changes. I expect some minor buffs to venoms (again) , some little putput for traps (kittening again). And some cheap number tweaks for daredevil.
Acro does not even exist.

Daredevil has a couple of things (Driven fortitude and Escapists absolution basically) that overlap, but it’s a much different line. It’s got a mix of offensive, utility and defensive abilities in each tier, and most of them are not contingent on successfully evading an attack.

Acro would look more like this

Pain response – successfully evading an attack grants 4s of regen and cleanses 1 damaging condition (5s icd)

Feline grace – successfully evading an attack grants 3 stacks of “graceful strikes”. Landing an attack consumes 1 stack of graceful strikes, restores X endurance (3 or 4) and grants 2 seconds of retaliation. 3s ICD, Max 3 stacks (charges are expended exactly like venoms)

Guarded initiation – successfully evading an attack grants 3s of stability (1 stack),3s ICD

Don’t Stop – successfully evading an attack grants 2 seconds of superspeed, resistance and quickness, 4s ICD.

I would rather not see too many benefits accrue to one element in the game in this case on evade or people are shoehorned into loading up on the evades to maximize potential and then too much accrues from one thing.

As example assuming we have as you suggest then on every evade (barring ICD) one can get healing, a condition clease (DD line) superpseed resistance , stability , quickness , endurance regen , retaliation, regen and another condition cleanse. It too much when people double up (DD LINE Acro line) , and they will.

You’re listing the effects without the durations and without pointing out how many traits you’re describing or the ICD of said traits (they will not go off on every evade, especially if you have to evade 2 attacks in close proximity of eachother), which I agree does make my suggestion seem insane. Getting those buffs for 1-3 seconds on evade makes it a lot more reasonable, some of those effects you listed have built in counterplay (the endurance regen and retal are contingent on landing a strike with a venom-like buff AFTER successfully evading), and you’re describing all the major traits and 1 minor trait from acro as well as 1 major and 1 minor trait from DD.

…I would much rather see enhancements to our shadowstep abilities and or a few ON interrupt traits such as “On interrupt lose two conditions” or “On interrupt gain resistance for 5 seconds”. One focusing on shadowsteps can have access to “all shadowsteps gain 200 range” or “gain 5 stacks might on shadowstep for 8 seconds”

This way you can garner diferent flavor of theif rather then one loading up on evade benefits or stealth benefits.

What do sets without interrupts or shadow steps do then? D/D, P/P, and Staff are going to have at best 2 shadowsteps (steal and SS, no one takes IS or ST), and only D/P has the real potential to seriously take advantage of an “on interrupt” defensive build (and maybe S/P, assuming the changes fix its issues)

Neither suggestion is perfect – some weaponsets have built in evades, others have built in interrupts or shadowsteps. While not every set has a weaponset evade, dodges have much better universal uptime across weapon sets than shadow steps or interrupts.

Honestly, it seems like the best bet would to turn acro into a mix of on evade/on interrupt/on shadowstep abilities, so all of our weaponsets have potential defensive choices that work with it. We don’t need another SA, an underpowered defensive line that only really works with one weaponset.

evilapprentice.6379:

babazhook.6805:

evilapprentice.6379:

Domey.9804:

I really like your ideas evilapprentice. But daredevil does exactly what you Want acro to so. I mean…those buffs to dodges should be in acro like before acro nerf…and daredevil should get something else than enhancing dodges or wnb acro 2.0.
But since This wont increase anets income, they wont do any big changes. I expect some minor buffs to venoms (again) , some little putput for traps (kittening again). And some cheap number tweaks for daredevil.
Acro does not even exist.

Daredevil has a couple of things (Driven fortitude and Escapists absolution basically) that overlap, but it’s a much different line. It’s got a mix of offensive, utility and defensive abilities in each tier, and most of them are not contingent on successfully evading an attack.

Acro would look more like this

Pain response – successfully evading an attack grants 4s of regen and cleanses 1 damaging condition (5s icd)

Feline grace – successfully evading an attack grants 3 stacks of “graceful strikes”. Landing an attack consumes 1 stack of graceful strikes, restores X endurance (3 or 4) and grants 2 seconds of retaliation. 3s ICD, Max 3 stacks (charges are expended exactly like venoms)

Guarded initiation – successfully evading an attack grants 3s of stability (1 stack),3s ICD

Don’t Stop – successfully evading an attack grants 2 seconds of superspeed, resistance and quickness, 4s ICD.

I would rather not see too many benefits accrue to one element in the game in this case on evade or people are shoehorned into loading up on the evades to maximize potential and then too much accrues from one thing.

As example assuming we have as you suggest then on every evade (barring ICD) one can get healing, a condition clease (DD line) superpseed resistance , stability , quickness , endurance regen , retaliation, regen and another condition cleanse. It too much when people double up (DD LINE Acro line) , and they will.

You’re listing the effects without the durations and without pointing out how many traits you’re describing or the ICD of said traits (they will not go off on every evade, especially if you have to evade 2 attacks in close proximity of eachother), which I agree does make my suggestion seem insane. Getting those buffs for 1-3 seconds on evade makes it a lot more reasonable, some of those effects you listed have built in counterplay (the endurance regen and retal are contingent on landing a strike with a venom-like buff AFTER successfully evading), and you’re describing all the major traits and 1 minor trait from acro as well as 1 major and 1 minor trait from DD.

…I would much rather see enhancements to our shadowstep abilities and or a few ON interrupt traits such as “On interrupt lose two conditions” or “On interrupt gain resistance for 5 seconds”. One focusing on shadowsteps can have access to “all shadowsteps gain 200 range” or “gain 5 stacks might on shadowstep for 8 seconds”

This way you can garner diferent flavor of thief rather then one loading up on evade benefits or stealth benefits.

What do sets without interrupts or shadow steps do then? D/D, P/P, and Staff are going to have at best 2 shadowsteps (steal and SS, no one takes IS or ST), and only D/P has the real potential to seriously take advantage of an “on interrupt” defensive build (and maybe S/P, assuming the changes fix its issues)

Neither suggestion is perfect – some weaponsets have built in evades, others have built in interrupts or shadowsteps. While not every set has a weaponset evade, dodges have much better universal uptime across weapon sets than shadow steps or interrupts.

Honestly, it seems like the best bet would to turn acro into a mix of on evade/on interrupt/on shadowstep abilities, so all of our weaponsets have potential defensive choices that work with it. We don’t need another SA, an underpowered defensive line that only really works with one weaponset.

Well part of the problem with durations is they can get boosted with boon duration and while there a certain amount of sacrifice that goes on there, it can make what seems a reasonable duration into one that can be kept up in perpuity. I have been toying with an Engie who has access to a pileof boons and with some small investment in duration they become all but permanent and easy to reapply.

To shadowstep. Most every weapon set and build has some form of shadowstep. Steal is a shadowstep and i am sure people would love to cleanse a condition on steal or extend that steal another 200 units.

The only weaponsets that have no form of shadowstep inherent in themselves would be p/p and d/d. Remember we can spam a skill so even if the sSB as example only has one shadowstep you can use it multiple times in a row, just as with shadow strike and the like. That said there also has to be some sort of tweaks to d/d and p/p that can help there.

To Staff, I am using it in an interrupt build using the knockdown coupled with Distracting daggers/soh and basi. It works very well. I prefer it to pistol offhand interrupt simply because I find them easier to pull off and I do not use Ini to get an interrupt. ( A SOH steal that stealths followed by an immediate knockdown is very effective with a staff. )

I am not opposed to on evade type benefits on traits. I am opposed to having too many where simply by dodging I get half and more the boons in the game loaded on me. My PERSONAL opinion on boons is they are too readily available to the other classes.