Every profession has trait issues, however I felt we’d talk Acrobatics specifically.
It’s a trait line focused ideologically on mobility and evasion. It is “global” in that it is quite stealth independent relative to the Shadow arts line which focuses more on stealth than acrobatics does.
Acrobatics has 2 traits relating to stealth where Shadow arts has 5 that do not relative to everything else that does.
We obviously cannot ignore what our weapon skills and utilities do for us but looking at these two statements.
“Experts at stealth and surprise, thieves can move through the shadows, vanish into thin air, or steal items from their opponents and use them as weapons. Thieves practice an agile, acrobatic fighting style, which can make them very hard to hit.”
“Thieves are the masters of mobility, stealth and high single target damage. They can be very fragile if you counter their stealth with area of effects or large stacks of conditions, but they trade this fragility in order to have some of the highest burst damage in the game. They are able to help allies through traps, venoms and the mobility to flank most encounters.”.
I have no idea wtf they’re talking about.
In the first we are hard to hit because of our agileness. In the other our survivalbility is instead emphasized by stealth.
In reality, it can be both and there are certain builds that are able to utilize Acrobatics well for prolonged attacks with conditions. Or utilize both defenses to be significantly sturdy. I’d argue acrobatics lacks a bit of, effectiveness in the mobility department as a result of what looks like unsatisfactory numbers and poor traits.
1. Assassin’s Retreat.
- There are 3 game modes…well you can count Keg brawl as a 4th :P. Assassin’s retreat loses out a bit in WvW and Spvp as of it’s low duration relative to the time in between kills. It’s not consistent enough. In addition you’ll want to swap it out for many boss fights since even if it comes to moving out of attacks, it’s not proccing without anything to kill. It’s about as niche as a fall damage trait. It is flavourful but in terms of being “hard to hit through mobility”, it doesn’t do anything until after someones dropped dead or monsters have been dropped. Which means fighting without it primarily. It’s a retreat trait. If you want to specialize in retreating, this won’t help much.
2. Fleet of foot. It’s condi removal but it doesn’t remove any DoT’s which will kill you. Fine, it’s for mobility…but it doesn’t remove chill. With a 10 second ICD, I don’t understand why for the purpose of mobility this straight out doesn’t remove chill. It cheapens the skill from the get-go. Rangers have a similar “why?” trait in Evasive Purity. Okay it doesn’t remove chill, but it has 10s ICD. They’ve got to look at what they want for this. Either it’s a good snare cleanse meant to cover that weakness your build may have, or it’s a good cripple cleanse. Or it’s an already DoT mitigator or something. As it is? Lacking.
3. Pain response unwieldy. Seemingly they want DoT to be your solution to mobile thieves. Fine, but this has to have some use outside of the sturdiest “I will last 45s” builds.
4. Assassin’s Reward the healing is quite insignificant. The reason is not just what it heals, it is the time it takes to do it. AR heals you at the end of an animation, and 1 thing to note, is how long the animation of certain skills are, as a result of variable animation times the healing on AR really drops off knowing this, and especially because it applies after the fact instead of when the ini is consumed. Acrobatics seemingly encourages helping you in a pro-longed encounter, but AR’s healing really isn’t enough for this goal. Overtime it heals more than Pain response overtime fortunately, which was basically just a burst condi removal that falls short afterwards.
5. Hard to Catch. This trait can get you killed and worse yet as a result of certain terrain bugs, stuck in the floor. It’s actually not bad, thematically. I think it’s the same deal as the Engineers Automated Smoke bomb trait. These sort of traits are interesting, but lacking because of an ICD that should be about 10s lower granted they don’t actually remove stun, stunback or increase your fortitude every time (turtle’s defense). As a result of ICD, it doesn’t really live up to it’s name sake and as extra defense against stun or your only defense against stun, it’s lacking given the investment as a defensive tool relative to Quick pockets which is multi-purpose.
6. Expeditious dodger. Man the only problem with this is that it’s not 3s instead of 2.
I don’t claim to know it all, but you can almost feel a hole in Acrobatics. Some traits could honestly just get merged without issue for cohesiveness. Maybe you find it perfect :P.