Guild Wars 2

I’ve been attempting to play thief without trickery. The jist is that you don’t have access to steal enough and unreliable mobility.

The extra initiative pool is so important it feels like it should be core on thief. Bugs with infiltrator’s arrow failing and pathing of heartseeker (doesn’t reliably connect, similar to old warrior rush) result in severe punishment without the extra pool size.

Swiftness being unavailable except on dodge or pack runes makes it difficult to keep up with or kite targets and pushes for more initiative use to maintain the chase/distance further compounding the available initiative issue. Not having extra initiative gain on steal is one other thing that adds to the problem. Using dodge for swiftness can be heavily punish easily.

Nothing in any specialization makes up for the initiative strain that exists when not running Trickery. This is in my opinion the biggest reason that Trickery is mandatory on thief currently. Besides giving more initiative to another traitline, I’m not sure what would allow for the trickery specialization to be less necessary. If giving more initiative to other specializations though, the trick would be to make the intiative gain not compound with trickery or risk too much being available.

Trickery is thieves utility master trait line, you are right.
I tried 11100 a couple of times but i always switch back to Trickery as it just offers so much utility…

I have tried builds where it not taken. It hard to do.

Acro might be doable were the return on upper hand and Swindlers higher but I think most everyone finds if they want lower steal or more INI trickery is THE line.

15 ini should be baseline and boonsteal on steal should be baseline. Period. Giving Mesmer IP baseline is like giving thief sleight of hand baseline. But I’m not even asking for that. Just make 15 ini and steal boonsteal baseline at the very least.

CaptainShrimps.9143:

15 ini should be baseline and boonsteal on steal should be baseline. Period. Giving Mesmer IP baseline is like giving thief sleight of hand baseline. But I’m not even asking for that. Just make 15 ini and steal boonsteal baseline at the very least.

+1 this.