Guild Wars 2

First I’d like to post the Flanking Strike / Larcenous Strike update history to make my point a bit more clear.

Game-Update-Notes-April-30-2013
Larcenous Strike: Deliver a quick strike that steals up to two boons from an enemy. Costs 1 initiative.
Larcenous Strike, Stab skills: Reduced aftercast by 0.5 seconds.

Flanking Strike skill:
Now evades and delivers one strike instead of delivering two attacks.
Removed boon removal.
Reduced initiative cost from 4 to 3.
Now toggles for 5 seconds to a second skill, Larcenous Strike, if the attack hits an enemy.
Improved reliability of flanking strike.

Game-Update-Notes-June-25th-2013
Larcenous Strike: Increased the initiative cost to 2.

Game-Update-Notes-October-15-2013
Larcenous Strike: This skill now steals only 1 boon.

Game-Update-Notes-September-9-2014
Larcenous Strike: Initiative cost of this skill has been reduced to 1.

Flanking Strike: This skill now must successfully hit a target before giving the thief access to Larcenous Strike. Initiative cost has been increased to 4.

To summarize the initiative changes
Flanking strike
- From 4 to 3 (4/30/13), from 3 to 4 (9/9/14)
Larcenous Strike
- 1 (4/30/13), from 1 to 2 (6/25/13), from 2 to 1 (9/9/14)

Initiative costs were reverted back to how they were in their initial implementation on the patch risk was added to the skill.

Larcenous Strike was weakened by removing only 1 boon from the target because it was possible to use the skill on missed Flanking Strikes, hence it was too strong and there was no risk to it.

On the 9/9/14 update however, risk was added to the skill, initiative costs were reverted but no change was made to the amount of boons the skill removes. Given: the risk of missing the skill, the current high boon state of the game and the lack of boon stripping I believe it should at least be considered to revert the skill to its original potency, while still keeping the added risk to it.

I’d be against the suggestion. If you want to break through boons you can combine with steal to steal 3 at once.

Steal prioritizes Aegis and Stability first. I don’t know what larcenous prioritizes, but last I checked vs elementalists Might is the lowest priority vs them in a fight.

I think if it were clearer how boon steal prioritization works with larcenous and steal we might be able to utilize it better. Or if larcenous prioritized boon steal based on last in first out the skill would be fine.

I wonder if there is a bug where new might stacks don’t reset might as the most recent boon added.