Guild Wars 2

Currently, the Acrobatics trait line feels too underwhelming. I think these changes would make it a solid line to trait into compared to the others, without being too powerful either. Let me know what you guys think about these changes.

[Minor/Adept] Expeditious Dodger: Gain 3s of swiftness upon dodging.

• Slightly increased swiftness duration gained when dodging since the Acrobatics line no longer gives increased boon duration, and a few of the old traits that gave swiftness in the Acrobatics line got removed as well.

[Major/Adept] Long Strides: Increases the range of shadow steps by 150.

• Shadow steps fit in with the Acrobatics trait line nicely, and this should be a good supplement for the old Long Reach trait in the Trickery line that is no longer available.

• ~Alternative Trait to Long Strides~ [Major/Adept] Practiced Tolerance: 7% of precision(or power) is converted into vitality.
• The old Practiced Tolerance trait in the Critical Strikes line has been changed to grant ferocity based on precision instead. It should be renamed as it doesn’t fit the new version.
• This trait can be quite useful to thieves since we have the lowest base health pool, and it fits in with the Acrobatics line better.

[Major/Adept] Vigorous Recovery: Remove a condition while under the effects of vigor. (6-7s ICD)

• It’s possible to have a good amount to vigor without the current version of this trait(gain vigor upon using a heal skill), and the Acrobatics trait line could use a little more condition removal optionally. This should synergize well with the new Feline’s Grace.

[Major/Adept] Assassin’s Reward: Heal yourself for each point of initiative spent when using a skill. Heals for 75 + (0.05 * Healing Power) per initiative.

• Moved down from grand master to adept tier.
• Increased the base healing received from this trait from 69 to 75 per initiative spent because it feels way too weak currently for a grand master trait. With these current numbers it’s still only about as strong as the regeneration boon you get from Pain Response(50% up time), but this trait doesn’t remove any conditions like Pain Response does.

[Minor/Master] Feline Grace: Gain 5s of vigor upon successfully evading an attack. (3s ICD)

• Increased the duration of vigor gained from 4s to 5s. Increased the ICD from 1s to 3s. This should prevent vigor from possibly stacking up too long with some of the other changes in this thread.

[Major/Master] Pain Response: Gain 10s of regeneration and remove 3 damaging conditions(bleed, burn, poison, torment, or confusion) when struck while your health is below 75%. (20s ICD) Condition damage now counts towards being “struck” while below 75% hp.

• Moved up from adept to master tier.
• Condition damage itself can now trigger this trait instead of only from being hit. This is important because this line specializes in evades which can possibly prolong the condition clear from this trait since you aren’t being hit. Someone could also condition bomb you while above 75% health then not attack you any more. The conditions would still tick over time well past the 75% threshold, but you wouldn’t get the cleanse from this trait.
• Still only removes 3 damaging conditions, but torment and confusion are added to the list of conditions that can possibly be removed by this trait.

[Major/Master] Swindler’s Equilibrium: Successfully evading an attack while wielding a sword or spear recharges steal by 3 seconds. (5s ICD)

• Currently reducing steal’s recharge by 1s with a 1s ICD, it is about impossible to achieve the best results as you cannot dodge nearly once per second consistently, nor would that be optimal as you would be dealing no damage. This should help achieve good results more realistically without promoting dodge spamming to get the most use out of this.

[Major/Master] Upper Hand: Regain 2 initiative when you successfully evade an attack. (5s ICD)

• Moved down from grand master to master tier.
• Increased initiative gained per successful evade from 1 to 2. ICD increased from 3s to 5s. This is a slight buff since it feels a bit weak currently(especially for being a gm trait), and it helps with the ICD problem similar to Swindler’s Equilibrium.

[Minor/GrandMaster] Endless Stamina: The effects of vigor on you are enhanced by 100%.

• Increased from +50% to +100% vigor effectiveness. This will effectively make vigor as strong as it was pre-patch(June 23), so endurance will restore twice as fast again(10 per second) when you have vigor.
• Currently, this trait only gives you an extra dodge every 40 seconds if you have permanent vigor, which is pretty weak. With this change it will give you an extra dodge every 20 seconds with permanent vigor, which still isn’t too strong so it could definitely use this buff.

[Major/GrandMaster] Hard to Catch: When you steal from an enemy you gain a Hard to Catch buff for 10 seconds. The Hard to Catch buff restores 25 endurance per successful evade. (2s ICD)
~Alternatively, this trait could give 5 stacks of the Hard to Catch buff when you steal for 10 seconds. A successful evade would use up 1 stack of the buff, and restore 20 or 25 endurance. (1s ICD so all the procs couldn’t be used up from one dodge, which could possibly waste some of the endurance gained like the current version of this trait)
Since this version is more flexible, it could maybe restore 20 endurance instead of 25 per successful evade.

• Moved up from master to grandmaster tier.
• Currently this trait instantly restores 100 endurance when you get stunned and stun breaks. You still get interrupted however, and if you already have some endurance when you get stunned then you gain less than 100 endurance, possibly gaining 0 endurance if you are already full. That would make this trait purely a stun break on a 30s ICD possibly. The stun break also isn’t controllable so it could end up being wasted on a very minor daze like Headshot.
• This change will fix that problem with the current version of this trait, while also having a more active play style that rewards successful dodges. Also the name is pretty fitting as you don’t want to be caught when you just stole something.

[Major/GrandMaster] Guarded Initiation: Shadow steps remove blind, weakness, and slow. Gain a Guarded Initiation buff after shadow stepping for 5 seconds which causes your next single attack to be unblockable. (10s ICD)

• Moved up from master to grandmaster tier.
• Shadow steps fit the Acrobatics theme and the trait’s name because they are used to engage an opponent. The current Guarded Initiation feels too situational to be very useful, and this new version opens up some interesting new combos.

[Major/GrandMaster] Don’t Stop: Cripple and chill applied to you have 50% reduced effectiveness. Convert an incoming immobilize into 4s of cripple instead. (10s ICD)

• No changes. The converted immobilize to cripple could be the same duration as the immobilize was instead of always 4 seconds though.

Moved/Removed Traits:

[Major/Adept] Fleet Shadow: Move 66% faster while in stealth.

• Increased movement speed from +50% to +66% while in stealth. This will allow you to ignore movement impediments from cripple and chill while in stealth. Max movement speed is still capped at +33%.
• I would recommend merging this trait into the Shadow Arts line because stealth traits fit better there, and it kind of overlaps with the Don’t Stop trait which is already in the Acrobatics line.

I really like some of the proposals. One thing that always puzzled me is why there nothing in traits to enhance shadowsrteps. One would think this would fit nicely in acro.

As example “Increase range of all shadowsteps by 200”.

babazhook.6805:

I really like some of the proposals. One thing that always puzzled me is why there nothing in traits to enhance shadowsrteps. One would think this would fit nicely in acro.

As example “Increase range of all shadowsteps by 200”.

Good idea, I think a trait that increases the range of shadow steps would be interesting and could be cool as well.

Very interesting ideas

I like your ideas however a few alternatives to consider.

Vigorous Recovery. (with change to duration of feline grace this becomes a bit redundant. Removing a condition is nice but I suggest this alternative) It becomes …

Ninth Life. On reaching health threshold gain 3 seconds of evasion. This breaks stun.
(30 second ICD health threshold 25 percent )

I prefer this over more condition removal as I think Pain response with its added condition removal and a better Guarded initiation would work better for those wanting to go that route. The evasion from this skill would trigger on evade traits. (thus a sword user would lower steal recharge three seconds if this kicks in)

Pain response :: To yours as proposed.

Fleet shadow:: To yours as proposed.

Expeditious dodger. Would increase to 4 seconds. (This due to boon duration loss and two sources of swiftness lost from the old pre patch thief plus less dodges)

Major.

Swindlers Equlibrium. Would remain at gain 1 second steal recharge decrease when evading an attack (1 second ICD) when wielding a sword. (this would synergize with the proposed evade on a new ninth life above)

Would add “Gain 200 range to all shadowsteps” (this latter not predicated on using a sword and would help things like Infiltrators arrow on SB as example))

This list seems pretty well thought out. I like the overall flavor of the changes, nice!

babazhook.6805:

Vigorous Recovery. (with change to duration of feline grace this becomes a bit redundant. Removing a condition is nice but I suggest this alternative) It becomes …

Ninth Life. On reaching health threshold gain 3 seconds of evasion. This breaks stun.
(30 second ICD health threshold 25 percent )

I prefer this over more condition removal as I think Pain response with its added condition removal and a better Guarded initiation would work better for those wanting to go that route. The evasion from this skill would trigger on evade traits. (thus a sword user would lower steal recharge three seconds if this kicks in)

Hm, sounds interesting. Would you still be able to use skills while the evasion kicks in? Might be a tad strong if so. I think there is still room for my condition removal suggestion as listed above though because people might not take Pain Response or Guarded Initiation, and being able to remove any condition, not just the damaging ones like from Pain Response, could be important to some builds too.

babazhook.6805:

Expeditious dodger. Would increase to 4 seconds. (This due to boon duration loss and two sources of swiftness lost from the old pre patch thief plus less dodges)

I think 3 seconds would probably be a bit more fitting. Not really too big of a deal either way. The current 2 seconds is just a little short now with no more boon duration from this line.

babazhook.6805:

Swindlers Equlibrium. Would remain at gain 1 second steal recharge decrease when evading an attack (1 second ICD) when wielding a sword. (this would synergize with the proposed evade on a new ninth life above)

If these two traits stay in their same current spots as suggested then they would not be able to be taken together though. Even if they could be taken together, I don’t think it would be enough in itself to fix the Swindler’s Equilibrium problem.

Raiden.1375:

babazhook.6805:

Vigorous Recovery. (with change to duration of feline grace this becomes a bit redundant. Removing a condition is nice but I suggest this alternative) It becomes …

Ninth Life. On reaching health threshold gain 3 seconds of evasion. This breaks stun.
(30 second ICD health threshold 25 percent )

I prefer this over more condition removal as I think Pain response with its added condition removal and a better Guarded initiation would work better for those wanting to go that route. The evasion from this skill would trigger on evade traits. (thus a sword user would lower steal recharge three seconds if this kicks in)

Hm, sounds interesting. Would you still be able to use skills while the evasion kicks in? Might be a tad strong if so. I think there is still room for my condition removal suggestion as listed above though because people might not take Pain Response or Guarded Initiation, and being able to remove any condition, not just the damaging ones like from Pain Response, could be important to some builds too.

babazhook.6805:

Expeditious dodger. Would increase to 4 seconds. (This due to boon duration loss and two sources of swiftness lost from the old pre patch thief plus less dodges)

I think 3 seconds would probably be a bit more fitting. Not really too big of a deal either way. The current 2 seconds is just a little short now with no more boon duration from this line.

babazhook.6805:

Swindlers Equlibrium. Would remain at gain 1 second steal recharge decrease when evading an attack (1 second ICD) when wielding a sword. (this would synergize with the proposed evade on a new ninth life above)

If these two traits stay in their same current spots as suggested then they would not be able to be taken together though. Even if they could be taken together, I don’t think it would be enough in itself to fix the Swindler’s Equilibrium problem.

I think adding distance on shadowsteps will make this Swindlers) useful to a sword build. People who use s/d more then i would have to chime in here. Would the extra shadowstep distance and the lower steal times be worthwile and relative to other builds that might just want that extra shadowstep distance is this enough for the sword?

(my thought here is with the suggested ninth life a s/d user that drops to 25 percent health and gets that evade can see a sudden decrease in the cooldown of steal and use steal right after the evade frames to get back on the offensive)

I do not think 3 seconds evasion OP (see blurred Frenzy) Now Blurred frenzy mesmer is a 2.5 second evade with a 15 second cooldown that allows an attack. I think this would have to be a pure evade which would be canceled if you did an attack.

Pain response revamped might warrant being in GM and assassins reward dropped to adept.

So it would be

Adept
Assassins reward (with your change)
Fleet shadow(with your change)
Ninth Life

Major
Guarded Initiation
Swindlers equlibrium
Hard To catch

GM

Pain response (3 of 5 conditions removed with the regen as you suggest)
Upper hand
Dont Stop.

To warrant upper hand at Grandmaster I would gain 2 INI on evade with a 3 second cooldown.

Guarded Initiation I would keep as Condition removal . The proposal I suggest for it is have the same three conditions (vulnerabilty weakness slow) . It would have same 1 second cooldown but the threshold would be lowered to 75 percent. I would than add (gain 1 ini if a condition removed)

Acro should make a thief very very hard to "pin down’ and a thief going this line would be hard to slow or immobilize.

If one was more interested in Condi removal they would take your revamped pain response and Guarded Init. Alternatively your own new hard to catch can be pushed up to GM and Upperhand as you suggested with tweaks down to Major. Either works really , but I do think Pain response becomes closer to a GM trait and with GI (revised) and Pain response (revised) 8 total condition types are addressed in some form.

If more “control” wanted over a given condition there always shadowstep and trickster as options.

babazhook.6805:

I think adding distance on shadowsteps will make this Swindlers) useful to a sword build. People who use s/d more then i would have to chime in here. Would the extra shadowstep distance and the lower steal times be worthwile and relative to other builds that might just want that extra shadowstep distance is this enough for the sword?

The increased shadow step range would definitely be useful as it would make thieves that much more mobile(especially thinking of short bow). It would definitely have to be played around with and tested, but I think a 200 range increase for all shadow steps including weapon skill shadow steps would be too much. However, this trait doesn’t have to have an added bonus to make it useful for other weapons necessarily. Other classes get -20% cool down on X Weapon traits etc. For thieves we don’t have weapon cool downs in the same way, so we can have certain special effects like these(Dagger Training in Deadly Arts only effects daggers for example).

babazhook.6805:

(my thought here is with the suggested ninth life a s/d user that drops to 25 percent health and gets that evade can see a sudden decrease in the cooldown of steal and use steal right after the evade frames to get back on the offensive)

I do not think 3 seconds evasion OP (see blurred Frenzy) Now Blurred frenzy mesmer is a 2.5 second evade with a 15 second cooldown that allows an attack. I think this would have to be a pure evade which would be canceled if you did an attack.

Well blurred Frenzy is a weapon skill, and we have a similar one: Pistol Whip. A comparable trait that comes to mind is Self-Regulating Defenses for engineers which uses Elixir S below 25% health(becoming invulnerable for 3 seconds). This trait has a 60 second cool down and you can’t attack while invulnerable, so the ninth life would probably get a similarly high cool down.

babazhook.6805:

Pain response revamped might warrant being in GM and assassins reward dropped to adept.

Hmm I would disagree. It could possibly get away with being moved to master tier with this change(maybe being switched with Vigorous Recovery), but for grand master tier it would need a cool down reduction or something at least.

babazhook.6805:

Guarded Initiation I would keep as Condition removal . The proposal I suggest for it is have the same three conditions (vulnerabilty weakness slow) . It would have same 1 second cooldown but the threshold would be lowered to 75 percent. I would than add (gain 1 ini if a condition removed)

If one was more interested in Condi removal they would take your revamped pain response and Guarded Init. Alternatively your own new hard to catch can be pushed up to GM and Upperhand as you suggested with tweaks down to Major. Either works really , but I do think Pain response becomes closer to a GM trait and with GI (revised) and Pain response (revised) 8 total condition types are addressed in some form.

Well that would make the current Guarded Initiation more viable for sure. I don’t know what threshold it would be exactly, but 75% might be low enough to make that trait a little too strong, especially with those other changes too.

I think my version of Guarded Initiation is a bit more interesting though, as it offers some potent new combos. For one, steal could be an almost guaranteed hit because blind would be cleared, and it would hit through a block. There would be a few exceptions such as if the opponent is evading or is invulnerable. This could be quite powerful combined with other traits like Sleight of Hand, which would then interrupt the block if they don’t have stability.

This would also give main hand dagger users more of a reason to trait into Acrobatics, instead of the usual Shadow Arts possibly, as landing an unblockable back stab not hindered by weakness every so often would be strong. There is an ICD for this trait though, and a shadow step is required to trigger the effects. You also would only have 5 seconds to land the single unblockable attack, so you would have to manage your utilities a bit more, and choose what the best use of your unblockable attack would be if it’s off cool down etc.

>>Well blurred Frenzy is a weapon skill, and we have a similar one: Pistol Whip. A comparable trait that comes to mind is Self-Regulating Defenses for engineers which uses Elixir S below 25% health(becoming invulnerable for 3 seconds). This trait has a 60 second cool down and you can’t attack while invulnerable, so the ninth life would probably get a similarly high cool down.

Well there also distortion for the mesmer and they can get longer evades using that, albeit sacrificing damage. its cooldown is 50 seconds. I can see pushing Ninth life upwards.

Now the reason i think your suggested pain response should move upwards is it becomes very close to cleansing ire which s a GM trait. While a Warrior can get ardrenaline refilled faster then the ICD of the Pain response , they DO have to land that blow whereas pain response just kicks in at the threshold. Yes cleansing ire removes any three conditions but I can argue that removing only the damaging conditions is superior in many ways.

To the distance on shadowsteps , I do not think 200 overly much but that said 150 might be more appropriate . This would still put steal lower then it was before and will give the weapons a max range of 1050. Shadowstep would be 1350 the same range as steal.

My thinking on GI was this. If a person is trying to keep his health high so as to keep those three conditions off on a one second cooldown he will have to take some extra healing as in Assassins reward where the more INI you burn the more health coming in. This would trigger the one ini gain per second but ONLY if one of those conditions cleared. I do not think 75 percent threshold overly powerful here as slow/weakness/vulnerability are not always going to be on the player and the player is not always going to be over 75 percent health. There a lot of times where the skill will provide nothing.

It would probably need testing to see if it in fact too low but my gut feel is 75 percent is about right. I think this would make the skill a lot of fun and it could synergize well with P/P as example using IP with Assassins reward where an unload will bring ones health up high enough to trigger a cleanse on one of those conditions bringing back a bit of ini to the shooter. Since unload takes a bit over a second IF one has two of those conditions on (unlikely) and is over 75 percent health 2 ini would come back.

Now the other thing that this version of GI might do is make skelk venom as a heal more usable. Skelk over the LONG term does not provide as much healing as does Withdraw but in short bursts provides much more. This means it more likely you can bring your health up and over that 75 percent and keep it there a while but only when attacking and GI is predicated on making attacks.. Since skelk gets heals on attack if you do have these conditions you can generate some INI as well.

This would be amazing

babazhook.6805:

Now the reason i think your suggested pain response should move upwards is it becomes very close to cleansing ire which s a GM trait. While a Warrior can get ardrenaline refilled faster then the ICD of the Pain response , they DO have to land that blow whereas pain response just kicks in at the threshold. Yes cleansing ire removes any three conditions but I can argue that removing only the damaging conditions is superior in many ways.

The thing is, you have a lot more control on when to proc Cleansing Ire. Pain Response could proc when you only have 1 of the 3 possible conditions on you, making it much less useful. Cleansing Ire also helps regain adrenaline when hit, and it can cleanse about 2-3 times as many conditions between both weapon sets within 20 seconds not too difficultly. Maybe more if the previous example I mentioned about Pain Response happens.

I like the changes, my only concern is the master major selection having too many very strong traits competing with one another while also being very similar in how they are used. I understand acrobatics is about dodging but imho, with how thief is I would always take vigorous recovery but constantly be rubbing my head thinking what would make me choose the other 2.

Competing traits are good, but competing and similar traits makes you feel like that trait line is only for 1 purpose with no room to change it up a little. Honestly I’d move fleet shadow to SA to add to one of the minor traits while keeping the 50% and bring back the trait to gain initiative on using a healing skill so p/p and s/p can get a little love in addition to acrobatics helping the defense that both lack (reduce amount gain to like 2 so s/d doesn’t become endless with initiative). To keep UH from stacking to much with this, they can add an ICD of 20 seconds so it isn’t so perfectly lined with withdraw.

I edited the main post slightly to move Pain Response up to master tier and Vigorous Recovery down to adept tier.

NinjaEd.3946:

I like the changes, my only concern is the master major selection having too many very strong traits competing with one another while also being very similar in how they are used. I understand acrobatics is about dodging but imho, with how thief is I would always take vigorous recovery but constantly be rubbing my head thinking what would make me choose the other 2.

Competing traits are good, but competing and similar traits makes you feel like that trait line is only for 1 purpose with no room to change it up a little. Honestly I’d move fleet shadow to SA to add to one of the minor traits while keeping the 50% and bring back the trait to gain initiative on using a healing skill so p/p and s/p can get a little love in addition to acrobatics helping the defense that both lack (reduce amount gain to like 2 so s/d doesn’t become endless with initiative). To keep UH from stacking to much with this, they can add an ICD of 20 seconds so it isn’t so perfectly lined with withdraw.

Swindler’s Equilibrium and Upper Hand in the master major tier are similar in that they both proc off of a successful evade, but it should be okay in this case because SE is specifically tailored for sword users similar to how other classes get -20% weapon cool downs. Upper Hand could still be a good choice for sword users too, and it’s a good alternative to Swindler’s for non sword users. Everyone has access to dodges to be able to utilize it too.

Adding the current +50% speed Fleet Shadow to a Shadow Arts trait would be interesting, and I see a few traits there that it could be merged with nicely too.

To Pain response. I do play a warrior as well and find cleansing Ire is not as easy to use as is suggested. Indeed there a lot of warriors that find it can be counterproductive in that one loses damage from things like berserkers power or health return from adrenal. As such pain response would have to move closer towards cleansing ire than away from it.

While i actually think the proposals in this thread for acrobatics changes are the best of the lists put together I do prefer my own thoughts on GI and a change to vigorous recovery. I just think there enough traits dealing with conditions with GI/PR and don’t stop (using revised suggestions) in the traitline and another not needed. You in fact get as much and more condi cleanse as the SA line under your proposal.

(some rejuggling needed so that one of the condition removal traits at each tier meaning Fleet shadow may have to be pulled and moved to SA or become baseline at its existing 50 percent)

Too much condi cleanse is as bad as not enough in terms of game balance and knowing how well fast hands works with a warrior another that cleanses every 5 seconds moves towards too much.

(I have since seen you moved PR up to major)

babazhook.6805:

To Pain response. I do play a warrior as well and find cleansing Ire is not as easy to use as is suggested. Indeed there a lot of warriors that find it can be counterproductive in that one loses damage from things like berserkers power or health return from adrenal. As such pain response would have to move closer towards cleansing ire than away from it.

If you’re talking about the old version of Berserker’s Power, then it no longer is passive based on how many bars of adrenaline you currently have. Otherwise the same could be said for taking Pain Response, as the other options in the same line would be quite useful too, and the damage lost from not taking an offensive trait line instead would be noticeable.

babazhook.6805:

While i actually think the proposals in this thread for acrobatics changes are the best of the lists put together I do prefer my own thoughts on GI and a change to vigorous recovery. I just think there enough traits dealing with conditions with GI/PR and don’t stop (using revised suggestions) in the traitline and another not needed. You in fact get as much and more condi cleanse as the SA line under your proposal.

Too much condi cleanse is as bad as not enough in terms of game balance and knowing how well fast hands works with a warrior another that cleanses every 5 seconds moves towards too much.

Taking multiple condition cleansing traits has an opportunity cost though, and it’s not like you have to take them all. The current versions of Vigorous Recovery and Pain Response combined could cleanse just about as much as Shadow’s Embrace(an adept trait in the SA trait line) can alone. Granted, Shadow’s Embrace requires you to be in stealth to get it’s effects.

That said, I think Vigorous Recovery removing conditions fits the Acrobatics theme better than Pain Response does. If these together would indeed be too much condition cleansing, maybe some aspects of Vigorous Recovery and Pain Response could be combined to look like this:

[Major/Master] Vigorous Recovery: Remove a damaging condition(bleed, burn, poison, torment, or confusion) while under the effects of vigor. (5s ICD)

• Moved up from adept to master tier.

This would help since Pain Response sometimes only removes one or two conditions if less than 3 are on you at the proc time, and since PR is passive you can’t really control that. Since it’s required to have vigor on yourself to activate this trait, and our only sources of vigor are now from Feline Grace(successfully evading an attack) and Bountiful Theft(steal has to successfully hit an opponent to get the vigor), you’ll have to stay in fights to really get the most out of this trait.

Pain Response could then be reworked into something else entirely in the adept tier.

What do you guys think, would the current versions of Pain Response and Vigorous Recovery be too strong if they are taken together? Vigorous Recovery could maybe have its ICD increased to 6 or 7 seconds instead since it is in the adept tier now, but if they would still be too strong together how does this new reworked Vigorous Recovery sound? If this change happens, and if the Fleet Shadow trait gets merged with another trait in the Shadow Arts line, 2 trait spots would open up in the adept tier for new trait ideas.

I edited the main post to increase the ICD of Vigorous Recovery from 5 to 6-7 seconds. After this change I definitely don’t think it would be too strong of a condition cleanse when paired with Pain Response, especially considering the opportunity costs.

I also added this suggestion for merging Fleet Shadow into the Shadow Arts trait line:

Raiden.1375:

[Major/Adept] Fleet Shadow: Move 66% faster while in stealth.

• Increased movement speed from +50% to +66% while in stealth. This will allow you to ignore movement impediments from cripple and chill while in stealth. Max movement speed is still capped at +33%.
• I would recommend merging this trait into the Cloaked in Shadow grand master trait in the Shadow Arts line.
• The fall damage/Blinding Powder portion of the current Cloaked in Shadow trait would instead be combined with the -20% CD on deception skills portion of the current Concealed Defeat adept trait in the SA line, being renamed to Master of Deception(old trait name).
• The use Smoke Screen when downed portion of Concealed Defeat would then be added on to the Last Refuge adept trait in the SA line.

That will then open up an adept trait spot in Acrobatics in which I suggested this new trait to fill it in:

Raiden.1375:

[Major/Adept] Long Strides: Increases the range of shadow steps by 150.

• Shadow steps fit in with the Acrobatics trait line nicely, and this should be a good supplement for the old Long Reach trait in the Trickery line that is no longer available.

What do you guys think about these changes?

As far as fleet shadow being merged to cloaked in shadows, I still think that trait is in a poor position being tied with SR and VA. They should consider bringing something different to the table and get CiS out of there. Here is how I envision SA for the 2 purposes its best known for.

-[Adept Minor] Merficul Ambush: Same as is, very nice trait placement gives thieves an incentive to be in the fight vs on the edges.

-[Adept Major] Last Refuge: Changed to “Remove revealed effects and gain [Throw Feathers] as your stolen item”. This way the stealth can be used at your timing and not in the middle of an attack and more importantly, it can guarantee safety having removed Revealed.

-[Adept Major] Shadow’s Embrace: Revert to old form, remove 1 condition on stealth and 1 every 3 seconds. There was no reason to change this trait.

-[Adept Major] Concealed Defeat: Move to Master selection, with LR being the “get out of jail” card and SE being the primary defensive trait in this selection, it is easily overshadowed.

-[Master Minor] Meld with Shadows: Same 1 second duration on stealths, add effect "Move faster while stealthed. 66%. (This is where SA starts to turn thieves into a hunter by allowing quicker engaugments)

-[Master Major] Shadow Protector: Bump duration back to 10 seconds. Add 10 second ICD on regeneration application (regardless of who you applied it to). Simple, 3 seconds is not noticeable.

-[Master Major] Hidden Thief: Return blinding powder on steal use (+ blinding powder on falling damage trait), this made steal much stronger on initiation but was easily countered by the fact that you would see a thief disappear from a distance and you were blinded instantly. It was just nice to have a little AoE defense on engagement even if it was for a short second.

-[Master Major] Leeching Venoms: Lowered to adept trait line to differentiate stealth support and venom support a little more. Given the current idea of venoms, condition builds are better off not using them so losing the option of SE or LR turns venom builds more into a out-of-stealth support(it’d be nice to see some support venoms vs only dps support; like karka venom!).

-[Grandmaster Minor] Resiliance of Shadows: Same as is.

-[Grandmaster Major] Cloaked In Shadows: Removed, Blind on stealth placed onto Cloak And Dagger (the only skill that every needed this effect) and falling damage portion repositioned to hidden thief. New trait [Shadow Form] Gain stability when you are revealed and your initiative is above the threshold. Threshold 6 initiative. Stability duration 3 seconds. ICD 5 seconds. Gives x/d some sturdiness while making d/p less likely to receive these effects given the initiative spent to enter stealth.

-[Grandmaster Major] Shadow Rejuvenation: Add 1 initiative upon entering stealth and 1 every 4 seconds. Reason being you are better rewarded for entering/leaving stealth vs sitting in it.

-[Grandmaster Major] Venomous Aura: Same as is, venoms need fixing but this trait cannot help that.

Didn’t meant to steal thread, but just want to give an idea of how to give a line of options for SA and find a place for fleet shadow other than trying to pin it to a trait that never sees the day of light. Same way I think the flow of traits in acrobatics should support more than 1 build type so non-stealth defenses can become a little more popular than they were before in respect to s/p and p/p.

Make Assassin’s reward heal on succesful evade! evasion thieves have no sustain.

Kicker.8203:

Make Assassin’s reward heal on succesful evade! evasion thieves have no sustain.

Well that could be done, but evades and the ability to use initiative are both equally accessible to thieves, so the overall healing result should end up being about the same either way.

NinjaEd.3946:

As far as fleet shadow being merged to cloaked in shadows, I still think that trait is in a poor position being tied with SR and VA. They should consider bringing something different to the table and get CiS out of there. Here is how I envision SA for the 2 purposes its best known for.
…

Something along those lines could work as well. If Cloak and Dagger applies blind instead of vulnerability(which sounds reasonable), then the current Cloaked in Shadows trait should definitely be replaced with something else.

I think a trait that applies immobilize for 1s when you cripple a foe (10s ICD) would synergize well with a lot of our weapon sets like D/D and SB as well. This could maybe be added to the Uncatchable trait in the Trickery line. Dagger #4 would then be much more useful in helping to land CnD or catching up to an opponent etc.

I dont even know why Anet kept Fleet Shadow in Acrobatics… with chosen Acrobatics you will most likely have 50%+ swiftness uptime anyway, add to that Pack Runes or ToC and there you go Fleet Shadow is even more unnecessary in a trait line that doesn’t have any other traits improving Stealth…

Tarkan.5609:

I dont even know why Anet kept Fleet Shadow in Acrobatics… with chosen Acrobatics you will most likely have 50%+ swiftness uptime anyway, add to that Pack Runes or ToC and there you go Fleet Shadow is even more unnecessary in a trait line that doesn’t have any other traits improving Stealth…

Yeah I agree. Although better movement speed does fit this line, the requirement of being stealthed doesn’t. It also overlaps with the new gm trait Don’t Stop in this same line.

I added an alternative trait option to Long Strides in the adept tier. This was mainly due to every range increasing trait being removed in the June 23 patch, so Anet might not want any of those anymore. The new option is the old Practiced Tolerance from the CS line (7% of precision is converted into vitality). The current Practiced Tolerance in CS now gives ferocity based on precision, so it should be renamed to something else.

I also changed Pain Response so condition damage itself can now trigger the “hit” while below 75% hp. This should help justify its spot in the master tier, in addition to being able to cure torment/confusion now.