Guild Wars 2

This is just a little imaginary constructive ramble, no need for flames.

I would have made the thief start off at 0 initiative. Every weapon attack would do moderate damage OR a bunch of conditions (with evasion in mind for some of the attacks). Every attack would have a cooldown and build initiative. Damage difference and cooldown would depend on weapon set. All of the stealth attacks would have equal worth and there would be no positionals. Stealth attacks would build a single initiative as well. Steal would remain the same but F2-F4 would have initiative spenders= a very high damage hitting finisher, a multi hit burst attack, and a stealth (costing initiative)
The biggest burst damage a thief would do would be from the initiative spenders. THe multi hit of the initiative spenders would infact be more designed to give condition builds a burst damage attack based on condition stacks or amount, with the finisher being just like heartseeker but heavier hitting and as it is more for power/crit builds. The initiative spenders would use most of your initiative in a single use but the damage/duration would be buffed to make up for it
However no matter the weapon set the F2-4 would only change barely (mainly for Pistol mainhand and shortbow), and the animations for given weapon type.
Initiative spenders would have no cooldown.

The healing abilities and utility slots would remain the same, the traits would relatively remain the same. Initiative would degrade out of combat similar to A warriors adrenaline but a little slower. There would be no stealth granting weapon abilities.
Venoms would be removed from utility slots and each would be integrated into a weapon ability of each set. For venom sharing it would just give all nearby allies the ability to apply any condition the thief has just applied on their next attack.

What do you think would be a cool design?

I kinda like it actually

It’s not bad, but it also would make it less unique and in fact is very similar to adrenaline. I’m pretty content with the way they’re currently designed with only a few irks about specific skills and stealth not lasting long enough in PvE.

One minor but significant change I would definitely make is to go ahead and put shortened cooldowns on their weapon skills. If each weapon skill was on a .5 – 2 second timer I think the thief would feel more balanced. Without really making the thief any weaker, It would help stop the tendency to ability spam in and would prevent the constant issue I at least have with accidental ability queuing, which tends to waste a lot of initiative and screw up my tactics.

Einlanzer

One minor but significant change I would definitely make is to go ahead and put shortened cooldowns on their weapon skills. If each weapon skill was on a .5 – 2 second timer I think the thief would feel more balanced. Without really making the thief any weaker, It would help stop the tendency to ability spam in and would prevent the constant issue I at least have with accidental ability queuing, which tends to waste a lot of initiative and screw up my tactics.

Doesn’t look bad on paper, but this would be a pretty fundamental core change to the profession. Thieves are built around spammability and resource management allowing repeated use of a specific skill for a specific effect. Even a short cooldown on skills is going to throw that entire dynamic out of whack.