Guild Wars 2

Critical Strike > mostly people pick this because of Healing on Crits Damages on Grand Master trait

Acrobatic > What ? does it really exist ?

These two major traits are really underpower if compare with deadly art, trickery, dare devil and shadow art

Thief is not underpower but these two traits need rework

Im not talking about NERF or BUFF just REWORK to be more viable in all game type that include incoming raid

As an aside – does anyone have any info on Endless Stamina? It’s supposed to “enhance vigor effects by 50%” but in my testing I haven’t seen any difference in endurance regen with this trait on or off.

On topic – from a pvp perspective acro is weak right now, especially compared to DD. I rate Hard to Catch and that’s literally it. Critical Strikes is another weak line IMO. No Quarter is nice to have, but not worth it over DD, Trickery, DA or Shadow Arts. It’s also best for sustained damage, which thief doesn’t excel at due to survivability issues. I might take the signet cd reduction trait if I was running inf signet and signet of agility, but again, it’s outclassed.

Hope anet rework this out

Jinx.4619:

Critical Strike > mostly people pick this because of Healing on Crits Damages on Grand Master trait

Drawing attention to it will just cause them to nerf it to be in line with all the other croptastic trait lines we have.

RIP pve thief if they touch critical strikes grandmasters.

Critical Strikes isn’t that bad of a trait line. It’s just that we are able to maintain permanent fury without it through Thrill of the Crime and Pack Runes etc, making it not the most optimized depending on your build. It’s probably slightly weaker than Deadly Arts even without considering fury, which needs to be looked at (ex: DA Grandmaster Minor is better than CS Grandmaster Minor trait). Ferocious Strikes should be changed to make critical hits deal 20% more damage to foes above the 50% health threshold to make it on par with Executioner and the DA GM minor trait. Executioner would still be a bit stronger even after this change because Ferocious Strikes only applies to critical hits. A few more tweaks to CS after that would make it pretty viable (see thread in my sig for more suggestions).

Sarrow.2785:

As an aside – does anyone have any info on Endless Stamina? It’s supposed to “enhance vigor effects by 50%” but in my testing I haven’t seen any difference in endurance regen with this trait on or off.

Yeah, you probably won’t notice any difference ever. It only increases the endurance regeneration rate from 7.5 to 8.75 per second while under the effects of vigor. That’s only one extra dodge every 40 seconds, if you’re able to maintain permanent vigor.

Acrobatics is pretty awful. The vigor minors outshine the actual traits (horrible compared to feline grace) and Hard to Catch is ironicly the only good one (ironic since it used to be one of the worst traits in game). Power of Inertia being removed gives very little access to might with stealthless evade builds.

Haven’t found much reason to try Critical Strikes a whole lot. No Quarter is neat and all but didn’t feel necessary enough. Pistol traits are all gone except this single one which doesn’t save the P/P weapon set, I don’t really use signet builds, IP was only really cool with Ricochet~ nothing really stands out to me anymore.

Crit strikes is a functioning line – it could use some tweaks, but it’s low on the priority list when there are raging fires in our defensive lines.

Acro is worthless. Insultingly so, since they gutted it to sell us Daredevil. It needs to be redesigned from the ground up, either using Popeurbans “Mobility arts” idea, or focusing on defenses triggered on successful evade to keep thieves alive in between evade frames. For example, a trait that grants some combination of defensive boons on successful evade for a short duration (2-4s) with a similar cd (2-4s) to deter evade spamming.

SA is also pretty terrible. All of the good traits encourage stealth camping, which is silly in both PvP and WvW. Any effect that has an effect that scales with time spent in stealth should instead be changed to have 1 effect “on first entering stealth”, and a separate (but similar) effect while revealed. For example, SE could be changed to “Remove 1 damaging condition on entering stealth. While revealed, gain resistance for 1.25 seconds every time you successfully land an attack, 1s ICD”. This forces a thief to actually engage targets to get the benefits of their traits and it has a powerful effect balanced by allowing for counterplay by your opponent.

That would go a long way toward fixing core thieves primary issues.

Critical strikes isn’t in that bad a place. The only ugly point is ferocious strikes. It definitely is a trait line that’s best in PvE and is difficult to maximize in PvP, but I see that as a good thing, design wise – thief needs more damage for dungeons, but huge hits are toxic in low level PvP. The line needs some tweaks but not much, its niche is solid.

Acrobatics…yeah that one is a tire fire. I have trouble imagining it seeing play without really substantial changes – I don’t think number tweaks can salvage it at this point.

Critical Strikes is fine.
It’s pretty much our Damage trait line.

Problem with CS is that we will rarely ever do a non-pve build with it.
We are currently slaves to Trickery because of boons and initiative.
We MUST slot Daredevil to use our new ability (duh)

And for the last slot, we have to decide between condi removal (Shadow Arts) or more CC (Deadly Arts… that also has executioner and poison access, which are both important). CS simply doesn’t have a spot.

For acrobatics…. oh well.
For acrobatics to be usefull, it must compete with the DareDevil or the Trickery Slot. Currently it is far from it.

Azure Prower.8701:

Drawing attention to it will just cause them to nerf it to be in line with all the other croptastic trait lines we have.

RIP pve thief if they touch critical strikes grandmasters.

+1

I wished they would moveUnhindered Combatant to acrobatics so that I can use it with my condition build.
Since I have to take Lotus Training I miss all that could stuff.

Oh if you mean nerf ?
Drawing attention won’t do a thing
Cause nothing to nerf
They will nerf as long as the build is overpower in Spvp and WvW beside that they don’t do a thing

If they want to nerf theif in pve they will do it long time ago
When S/P can solo elite mob and you can still do that now

I says this because some traits are not making any sense
Ex sundering strike

Pls bring back Thief might stacking in Acro It’s bad enough that it was gutted both from SA and Acro.

On opening post: Yes.

Critical Strikes is mostly fine. The grandmaster trait selection is pretty good and there is some helpful utility.

Acrobatics, not so much. As has been discussed before it feels like they nerfed it so Daredevil could supplant it, which is ridiculous.

Ensign.2189:

Critical strikes isn’t in that bad a place. The only ugly point is ferocious strikes. It definitely is a trait line that’s best in PvE and is difficult to maximize in PvP, but I see that as a good thing, design wise – thief needs more damage for dungeons, but huge hits are toxic in low level PvP. The line needs some tweaks but not much, its niche is solid.

Acrobatics…yeah that one is a tire fire. I have trouble imagining it seeing play without really substantial changes – I don’t think number tweaks can salvage it at this point.

My contention is that it should compete with Shadow Arts, because it’s really a different type of defense. I use Acrobatics in place of Shadow Arts as a defensive line, but it feels like I’m gimping myself to do so.

They need to find a way to make it more thematically divergent from Daredevil than it currently is.

Crit Strikes is pretty solid thanks to some great minor traits and No Quarter. Acrobatics on the other hand is a hot mess.

i like CS as the dmg is much higher and the perma fury is great also.
DA gives 20% more dmg when target is below 50% and 10% more dmg when the target has a condition
CS gives more fury so more crit chance and more crit dmg and more 10% dmg when your target is above 50% which can sum up to 41% dmg when your target is above 50% and 31% when your target is below 50% hp
i will loss panic strike and mug evey 20 sec but will do more dmg over all
and if traited improvision that a lot more of dmg with CS

Okay

1. Side Critical > This should be rework
2. Signet > Should Increase might to 10 sec or 8
3. What ! 90% health to maintain when Mai Trin one hit you lose like 30% of your health already you need to regain health again just to keep up the damage same as keen observer
   Unrelenting is okay
   Sundering > 1% damages on 50% critical strike necro can apply 25 in 5 sec gosh useless unless you use staff and spam #2 on mob but you won’t get 25 and that will get you killed
   Practices Tolerance > its like 8 -13% crits damage : (
   Ankle Shot > If its bounce like before it worth using but now no ! short bow all the way
   No Quarter > oh this is good one but no ! i have enough damage already
   Hidden Killer > Pvp trait and Pvper wont pick this trait line
   Invigorating Precision > a must have and worth taking in pve

and please don’t let me start on Acrobatic

I would like to say that CS is fine, but it’s not.
- Adept – I cringe every time since there’s nothing here that improves my build. Randomly picked one.

- Master – All these are crap. Might as well take Practice Tolerance.

- GM – No Quarter…what else? Of all the 9 majors, this is the only one that’s worth picking. Some might take Invigorating Precision, but that does nothing to improve my damage output — it’s crap.

Acrobatic is a weird one. It’s crap when by itself, but if taken with DD, it’s just right — and that’s just wrong. Acrobatic should be able to stand on its own without DD. The 3rd dodge makes Feline Grace and Endless Stamina great and without it, they’re crap. But then again, with Channeled Vigor, Acro is not really needed. A single skill replaces the whole trait line — that’s just wrong.

Problem is CS isn’t as good as DA or Trickery since both have more utility and similar or higher DPS bonuses. It is still a solid line for critical strike builds since a player can see 25% additional DPS from it though.

Jinx.4619:

Critical Strike > mostly people pick this because of Healing on Crits Damages on Grand Master trait

Acrobatic > What ? does it really exist ?

These two major traits are really underpower if compare with deadly art, trickery, dare devil and shadow art

Thief is not underpower but these two traits need rework

Im not talking about NERF or BUFF just REWORK to be more viable in all game type that include incoming raid

Both lines need a complete overhual. I won’t speak about Acro since that topic has been spoken enough. But CS…in terms of PvP, it really doesn’t bring anything to the table because Trick and Pack runes does the job. In terms of the damage it adds…it’s marginal over Lead Attacks. In short, Trick line does CS job and more.

My opinion is CS/Acro are just bottom tier trait lines and they are in need of a rework. At least for PvP.