Guild Wars 2

1. 15k HP base, would be around 21k with Maruder.
2. 15 initiative baseline and make Prepardness where initiative cost for all skills is decreased by 1. (Ex. BP would be 5 initiative not 6 with this trait.)
3. Add F2 blinding powder skill. Why does Thief not have this? I’m surprised this isn’t even in the game considering Theives are “master of stealth”
4. Replace blinding powder utility skill with “Evasion” – evade all attacks for 6s
5. Deadly Arts: Executioner trait rework – all attacks ignore armor and protection from targets below 75%, damage is increased by 20% when target is below 25%
6. Significant CD reductions to certain thief utility skills (SR, Roll for Initiative, Haste, Etc)
7. Dash dodge – gain 2.5s of quickness for every dodge
Bound – gain 2.5s of protection for ever dodge
Lotus training – give ur opponents 5s of weakness( 20% dmg and condi reduction)
8. Steal – CD decreased by 5s
9. Reveal does not work on Thieves
10. And finally, fix the cluster bomb. Why does that thing defy gravity?

Just my top 10 things (no particular order) as to what Anet needs to do to revitalize this once great class. Other things I would fix as well is probably a rework of the Shadow Arts trait line but that’ll be for another thread. Hope you guys at Anet get a peak at this. And what are your thoughts? It is a bit too much? Too little? Or sounds about right?

Edit: Scratch 7. Instead, make it be “Evade the next attack after every dodge roll”

I want to keep blind and all the evades are already too much.
Your suggestions sound more like pressing every thief into the same role and I’d like to get away from that.
I think at first anet needs to acknowledge that the traitmerge was a huge mistake, not just for thieves, for the whole game. It might take a bit until they get it, I guess around a year from now.

ETA: Explanation: We have cooldown reduction since June, but no one takes the traits with the reduction, because of the merge. Maybe that wasn’t such a smart move, either the merge or putting cooldown behind a “trait wall”. I don’t know too much about other classes but I guess their trait merges brought them more damage and more sustain. Both of it is the core of the problem, if you split it up further you see that everything but self sustained D/P has been killed in June. So a solution to the state of the game would IMO be: Let people take 3 lines but every trait has got its own slot – and from there we can see what else needs to be done. Making more stuff potentionally OP won’t solve anything.
(Doesn’t mean I disagree with all of your points)

Jana.6831:

I want to keep blind and all the evades are already too much.
Your suggestions sound more like pressing every thief into the same role and I’d like to get away from that.
I think at first anet needs to acknowledge that the traitmerge was a huge mistake, not just for thieves, for the whole game. It might take a bit until they get it, I guess around a year from now.

Really huh? I didn’t list anything about roles just stuff that needs to be changed. And yes we are keeping blinding powder if that’s what you mean. Blinding Powder will now be a base skill for Thief, ya know the F2 skill. Like how Steal is F1 skill. It’s just so that we don’t have to waste a utility slot for a 3s stealth on a 40s CD. I mean really, this is just general changes that would make every thief build/role better.

RE: I don’t think anything I listed will be OP. Because right now, thief is horrendous. This would just put them with the rest of the pack

If you make daredevil stronger, then the way to go is daredevil (which it already is) – if you want to replace all blinds with evades you’re basically forcing people to go S/D or staff – so yes, you’re setting roles.

Jana.6831:

If you make daredevil stronger, then the way to go is daredevil (which it already is) – if you want to replace all blinds with evades you’re basically forcing people to go S/D or staff – so yes, you’re setting roles.

Blinds? I didn’t say anything about blinds.

The way I see it:
Back when I had all classes but an ele my buddy and I were duelling in pvp (he with his ele) and I said to him that ele seems to be the most boring class this game has – all you have to do is figure out a rotation and repeat it until someone dies.
June and HoT made every class like this – I don’t want thief to be like that.
I’m already bugging around for now 9 months, I don’t mind if it takes a bit longer until anet gets their heads in front of their desks again and finally grasp that this isn’t competive but downright boring.
It’s the other classes, not really thief – thief has got different problems – I said it many times: You can increase the damage all you like, won’t help you against invulnerability and 5k more health only help you that much against true shot, kill shot, COR, Rapid Fire and so on – this game and thief needs more than a quick fix.

Shovel Face.4512:

Jana.6831:

If you make daredevil stronger, then the way to go is daredevil (which it already is) – if you want to replace all blinds with evades you’re basically forcing people to go S/D or staff – so yes, you’re setting roles.

Blinds? I didn’t say anything about blinds.

“4. Replace blinding powder utility skill with “Evasion” – evade all attacks for 6s "

Alright, I’m out – have fun =)

Jana.6831:

Shovel Face.4512:

Jana.6831:

If you make daredevil stronger, then the way to go is daredevil (which it already is) – if you want to replace all blinds with evades you’re basically forcing people to go S/D or staff – so yes, you’re setting roles.

Blinds? I didn’t say anything about blinds.

“4. Replace blinding powder utility skill with “Evasion” – evade all attacks for 6s "

Alright, I’m out – have fun =)

Again I said nothing about damage. I didn’t list any buffs to damage at all so no idea why you brought that up. Second, here https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Blinding_Powder I guess someone doesn’t know there their thief skills are. Blinding Powder is a stealth skill buddy. And I guess I’ll say it for the third time now. WE ARE NOT GETTING RID OF BLINDING POWDER. WE ARE MOVING IT TO BECOME A BASELINE SKILL, AN F2 SKILL. It’s still there it’s just a base skill now, no need to have it as a utility it is a base skill on a 40s cool down. All you do is press F2 and u get instant stealth. Wait another 40s and press F2 and u get stealth again. ITS A BASE SKILL. JUST LIKE STEAL. ITS THERE FOREVER AND EVER. Don’t know how I can make this more clearer to you.

Problem really isn’t invuln but protection which the Executioner rework fixes. And if u don’t think 5000 more HP will help then wow.

You can’t be serious, right?
you: “Replace blinding powder with evades”
me: “I don’t want to evade, I want to blind”
you: “I didn’t say that”

Shaking my head.

ETA: D/P doesn’t need additional blinds – by adding a F2 blind skill you would add useless stuff for them. S/D, P/D, D/D and staff need blind or can make use of it. We had our blind (except S/D) in SA – why going the complicated way and invent more buttons to press instead of going back and revive what we once had? Or simply add blind to CnD.

Jana.6831:

You can’t be serious, right?
you: “Replace blinding powder with evades”
me: “I don’t want to evade, I want to blind”
you: “I didn’t say that”

Shaking my head.

LOL yes but did you read 3.?? You just wanna take out a utility skill and leave thief as the only class with 19 utility skills? LOL it doesn’t have to be evades, I just added something to replace BP since BP will be a base skill.

Ok instead of 6s of evades how about a skill that creates a cloud of smoke around the enemy for 4s, (basically perma blind for 4s) Happy now?

Jesus Christ, it’s a stealth skill man. Ok instead of it be BP how about an F2 skill that gives you 3s of straight up stealth no blindness nothing. Call it “stealth” Jesus ya happy now?

No, I don’t want blind to be baseline – kittenmit – I don’t want to go through all of your points and explain why each of them might be a bad idea (not all of them are) – all I’m saying is: be smart when it comes to baselines, let people decide what traits they want to take and be aware that not thief is the problem but the rest of the classes – you can’t buff thief enough to survive well in this meta – the AA Dagger buff brought that much, right?

Edit: Incoherent sentence

Jana.6831:

No, I don’t want blind to be baseline – kittenmit – I don’t want to go through all of your points and explain why each of them might be a bad idea (not all of them are) – all I’m saying is: be smart when it comes to baselines, let people decide what traits they want to take and be aware that not thief is the problem but the rest of the classes – you can’t buff thief enough to survive well in this meta – the AA D buff attack brought that much, right?

Dude for the 4th time now. It’s a stealth skill not a blind skill. It’s a baseline stealth skill for Theives. All the things I listed were stuff most of us Theives were asking for after season 1.

It seems as if you don’t know what the skill blinding powder does.

I can actually go on and explain thief the class to you – and explain to you that we already have a massive amount of stealth and we have reveal – blind is often more worth than stealth.

Jana.6831:

I can actually go on and explain thief the class to you – and explain to you that we already have a massive amount of stealth and we have reveal – blind is often more worth than stealth.

No need. It seems you did not read the full extent of my posts. Thanks for your time buddy.

I did – seems as if you didn’t know what you wrote though and were too busy to explain that you didn’t wrote what you did to me.
Thanks as well, honey, for disregarding everything I wrote

(I’m no dude and although I’m fine with it in game as I play a male thief it’s pretty irritating – in case you wonder about the “honey”).

1. 15k HP base, would be around 21k with Maruder.

O.K.

2. 15 initiative baseline and make Prepardness where initiative cost for all skills is decreased by 1. (Ex. BP would be 5 initiative not 6 with this trait.)

15 Ini baseline okay, rest not.

3. Add F2 blinding powder skill. Why does Thief not have this? I’m surprised this isn’t even in the game considering Theives are “master of stealth”

Could agree with that on a 60 sec. CD.

4. Replace blinding powder utility skill with “Evasion” – evade all attacks for 6s

Would make thieves way too strong. 6s to freely rampage … hell no

5. Deadly Arts: Executioner trait rework – all attacks ignore armor and protection from targets below 75%, damage is increased by 20% when target is below 25%

So you want to ignore 967/1118/1271 armor rating depending on the class and on top of that the reduction from protection + 20% increased dmg at 25% health. Sounds completely broken.

6. Significant CD reductions to certain thief utility skills (SR, Roll for Initiative, Haste, Etc)

You can reduce the cds already when you trait for it

7. Dash dodge – gain 2.5s of quickness for every dodge.

Quickness on thief is really strong with the buffed autoattacks. Would be broken.

Bound – gain 2.5s of protection for ever dodge.

So perma protection .. nope

Lotus training – give ur opponents 5s of weakness( 20% dmg and condi reduction)

You can have permanent weakness uptime on your target already when you trait DA and DD. No need for more.

8. Steal – CD decreased by 5s

Steal is already so strong with all the enhancements. Reducing the cd even more would be crazy.

9. Reveal does not work on Thieves

Counterplay

10. And finally, fix the cluster bomb. Why does that thing defy gravity?

Agree with that kind of … its nice to set up your burst .. clusterbomb .. switch weapons … blackpowder .. heartseeker … steal .. backstab … can make it hit all at once. Fixing the travel speed would ruin this combo.

As i see it you don´t aim to balance thief you want to make it broken. We have Revenant already as an example for overtuning. Thief maybe needs minor fixes but no buffs. The other overperforming proffessions need a nerf.

Best regards!

Shino!

In all honesty, some of the changes look kinda OP. Some stuff like preparedness being baseline is good, but getting quickness on dodge would be pretty insane. I can already get 15s of quickness on a burst, you really don’t need more than that lol.

Reveal working on thieves needs to stay the way it is tbh, considering that we now have condi cleanse out of stealth and backstab is now a style preference, our old arguments against it have pretty much been sorted out. I’d sooner see a way to cleanse externally applied reveal but still have it affect us, if you’re going to tamper with it.

Preparedness needs to be baseline if they’re going to balance our ini costs around it, otherwise you end up dependant on trickery like ele is dependant on arcana. Agreed on this one.

Extra health won’t help imo, I already have 15-16k health with marauder armor and weapons and the rest zerker, 18k health with power/vit food and furious maintenance oils. If people choose to build full zerk despite marauder existing then they should be squishy, quite frankly that’s a build error not a class design issue.

If we’re going to have an evasion skill, I’d rather see the acro trait have it’s duration buffed to a more reasonable value so that the line is more valuable. Make it 4s instead of 2s and I might notice it going off lol.

In general, I’d like to see other sets like D/D and S/P less dependant on traits to work, and better traits to choose from so there’s more variety. That’s the sort of change I could get behind 100%.

Shovel Face.4512:

1. 15k HP base, would be around 21k with Maruder.

HP is fine tbh. 15k base means I could run berserker with wurm runes and I’d have the same health as I do now, which would be crazy strong.

2. 15 initiative baseline and make Prepardness where initiative cost for all skills is decreased by 1. (Ex. BP would be 5 initiative not 6 with this trait.)
*Preparedness baseline sounds fine. I’d really love for Bountiful Theft to be a minor. *

3. Add F2 blinding powder skill. Why does Thief not have this? I’m surprised this isn’t even in the game considering Theives are “master of stealth”
*Honesty, no need. We already are at a point where D/P won’t die if it doesn’t want to with Dash, ports and stealth. No more ez-access stealth pls. *

4. Replace blinding powder utility skill with “Evasion” – evade all attacks for 6s
Waaaat? Hell naw. Way too strong.

5. Deadly Arts: Executioner trait rework – all attacks ignore armor and protection from targets below 75%, damage is increased by 20% when target is below 25%
Executioner is fine, but maybe an Acro GM that bypasses protection on a internal CD?

6. Significant CD reductions to certain thief utility skills (SR, Roll for Initiative, Haste, Etc)
*RFI needs to be 40s. Refuge is fine. Haste could be 30s after Trickster. *

7. Dash dodge – gain 2.5s of quickness for every dodge
Bound – gain 2.5s of protection for ever dodge
Lotus training – give ur opponents 5s of weakness( 20% dmg and condi reduction)
All 3 dodges are already quite strong.

8. Steal – CD decreased by 5s
No!

9. Reveal does not work on Thieves
Reveal is weird in that the meta picks for the classes that hard counter thief anyway have it but it is required for counter play. So no opinion on this.

10. And finally, fix the cluster bomb. Why does that thing defy gravity?
*Ya, clusters need to travel a little faster. *

Apart from the above, maybe
1) Guarded Initiation needs to ignore or strip retaliation as well.
2) Pistol Whip initiative reverted back in PvP.
3) Dancing Dagger damage increased by 33%.
4) Cloak and Dagger also blinds.
5) D/D #3 needs a rework to be something like a gap closer. Maybe something like phase traversal? Has a wind up and can be interrupted but not spammed due to aftercast or something. I’m not sure.

Uhh no.

This game needs to nerf the previous power creeps introduced since June 23rd not to completely OP the thief class.

I shudder to think what a good thief player would do with all these changes…..

Shinobi.3240:

1. 15k HP base, would be around 21k with Maruder.

O.K.

2. 15 initiative baseline and make Prepardness where initiative cost for all skills is decreased by 1. (Ex. BP would be 5 initiative not 6 with this trait.)

15 Ini baseline okay, rest not.

3. Add F2 blinding powder skill. Why does Thief not have this? I’m surprised this isn’t even in the game considering Theives are “master of stealth”

Could agree with that on a 60 sec. CD.

4. Replace blinding powder utility skill with “Evasion” – evade all attacks for 6s

Would make thieves way too strong. 6s to freely rampage … hell no

5. Deadly Arts: Executioner trait rework – all attacks ignore armor and protection from targets below 75%, damage is increased by 20% when target is below 25%

So you want to ignore 967/1118/1271 armor rating depending on the class and on top of that the reduction from protection + 20% increased dmg at 25% health. Sounds completely broken.

6. Significant CD reductions to certain thief utility skills (SR, Roll for Initiative, Haste, Etc)

You can reduce the cds already when you trait for it

7. Dash dodge – gain 2.5s of quickness for every dodge.

Quickness on thief is really strong with the buffed autoattacks. Would be broken.

Bound – gain 2.5s of protection for ever dodge.

So perma protection .. nope

Lotus training – give ur opponents 5s of weakness( 20% dmg and condi reduction)

You can have permanent weakness uptime on your target already when you trait DA and DD. No need for more.

8. Steal – CD decreased by 5s

Steal is already so strong with all the enhancements. Reducing the cd even more would be crazy.

9. Reveal does not work on Thieves

Counterplay

10. And finally, fix the cluster bomb. Why does that thing defy gravity?

Agree with that kind of … its nice to set up your burst .. clusterbomb .. switch weapons … blackpowder .. heartseeker … steal .. backstab … can make it hit all at once. Fixing the travel speed would ruin this combo.

As i see it you don´t aim to balance thief you want to make it broken. We have Revenant already as an example for overtuning. Thief maybe needs minor fixes but no buffs. The other overperforming proffessions need a nerf.

Best regards!

Shino!

How does any of this make it broken? You do know protection is thrown around like crazy right? It’s not unheard of for teams to always have protection. Thief has kitten burst because of protection. And yeah I scratched 7. If u didn’t see the edit. And against, I’m not wasting BT just to CD on some skills. That’s a waste. Their is unplayable, I don’t understand how some of u can’t deny this. I’ve main thief and I play PvP, I know what I’m talking about and none of this seems over the top.

Shovel Face.4512:

How does any of this make it broken? You do know protection is thrown around like crazy right? It’s not unheard of for teams to always have protection. Thief has kitten burst because of protection. And yeah I scratched 7. If u didn’t see the edit. And against, I’m not wasting BT just to CD on some skills. That’s a waste. Their is unplayable, I don’t understand how some of u can’t deny this. I’ve main thief and I play PvP, I know what I’m talking about and none of this seems over the top.

Some of the proposed changes are just completely broken, and out of place alike.

Your ‘4’…6 seconds auto evade, just…no. There should not even be a discussion about this. As long as you decide to stick with that, I will be having a hard time to take any of your points serious.

As nice as your executioner change sounds, it is obviuosly broken. Toughness/ Armor is in place to deny direct damage bursts like ours. Thieves should be focussing on weak targets instead of getting an ultimate anti-bunker trait. Protection is to be dealt with with a smart use of boonstrip, not with a passive ability.
Even if the changes were ok, you would not put them into a single, already powerful trait.
And remember this is not only pvp. Toughness scaling is also imporatnt for higher pve content.

I would have said smthng about unhindered combatant, but thankfully you have seen that yourself by now. Still…I get a ton of complaints now for spamming evades, no idea how it would be with that mechanic in place, especially with bonus effects on evades. Perhaps it would be more appropiate to increase the window of the dodge by 1/4 or so seconds. UC is already a really good pick right now tho.

Bound(ing dodger) This is meant to be an offensive trait, and also already a good one. No protection here. Thieves do not work with boons either, we prefer other methods.

Lotus training. 20% damage and condi reduction…..you really dont see a problem with that? With a straight 20% damage reduction, unremoveable, on every dodge? (besides all the other effects and the weakness)

Reveal. I have pretty recently been reminded, that reveal is a mechanic, designed to counter stealth gameplay on thieves. Why would you exclude a profession from a mechanic, that is aimed exclusively on that profession?

As the others said, this is called power creep. You just try to make this class better instead of fixing it or ‘making it viable’. You dont even try to promote underpowered mechanics, you are trying to take our strenghts and make make them even stronger, while taking our weaknesses, and removing them.
The best I could say is that you are trying to adress the symptoms without taking notice of the disease, and you are fixing a scratch at the arm by developing an entirely cybernetic prothetic bodypart with big guns in it. (maybe the metaphor is not entirely helpful here, but I hope you got my point)

Shovel Face.4512:

Shinobi.3240:

1. 15k HP base, would be around 21k with Maruder.

O.K.

2. 15 initiative baseline and make Prepardness where initiative cost for all skills is decreased by 1. (Ex. BP would be 5 initiative not 6 with this trait.)

15 Ini baseline okay, rest not.

3. Add F2 blinding powder skill. Why does Thief not have this? I’m surprised this isn’t even in the game considering Theives are “master of stealth”

Could agree with that on a 60 sec. CD.

4. Replace blinding powder utility skill with “Evasion” – evade all attacks for 6s

Would make thieves way too strong. 6s to freely rampage … hell no

5. Deadly Arts: Executioner trait rework – all attacks ignore armor and protection from targets below 75%, damage is increased by 20% when target is below 25%

So you want to ignore 967/1118/1271 armor rating depending on the class and on top of that the reduction from protection + 20% increased dmg at 25% health. Sounds completely broken.

6. Significant CD reductions to certain thief utility skills (SR, Roll for Initiative, Haste, Etc)

You can reduce the cds already when you trait for it

7. Dash dodge – gain 2.5s of quickness for every dodge.

Quickness on thief is really strong with the buffed autoattacks. Would be broken.

Bound – gain 2.5s of protection for ever dodge.

So perma protection .. nope

Lotus training – give ur opponents 5s of weakness( 20% dmg and condi reduction)

You can have permanent weakness uptime on your target already when you trait DA and DD. No need for more.

8. Steal – CD decreased by 5s

Steal is already so strong with all the enhancements. Reducing the cd even more would be crazy.

9. Reveal does not work on Thieves

Counterplay

10. And finally, fix the cluster bomb. Why does that thing defy gravity?

Agree with that kind of … its nice to set up your burst .. clusterbomb .. switch weapons … blackpowder .. heartseeker … steal .. backstab … can make it hit all at once. Fixing the travel speed would ruin this combo.

As i see it you don´t aim to balance thief you want to make it broken. We have Revenant already as an example for overtuning. Thief maybe needs minor fixes but no buffs. The other overperforming proffessions need a nerf.

Best regards!

Shino!

How does any of this make it broken? You do know protection is thrown around like crazy right? It’s not unheard of for teams to always have protection. Thief has kitten burst because of protection. And yeah I scratched 7. If u didn’t see the edit. And against, I’m not wasting BT just to CD on some skills. That’s a waste. Their is unplayable, I don’t understand how some of u can’t deny this. I’ve main thief and I play PvP, I know what I’m talking about and none of this seems over the top.

The best counter to the uptime on protection would be if larcenous strike stole 2 boons again. After they increased the cost of flanking strike and required the hit for the rollover, they should have reverted it back to 2 boons.

Asrat.2645:

Shovel Face.4512:

How does any of this make it broken? You do know protection is thrown around like crazy right? It’s not unheard of for teams to always have protection. Thief has kitten burst because of protection. And yeah I scratched 7. If u didn’t see the edit. And against, I’m not wasting BT just to CD on some skills. That’s a waste. Their is unplayable, I don’t understand how some of u can’t deny this. I’ve main thief and I play PvP, I know what I’m talking about and none of this seems over the top.

Some of the proposed changes are just completely broken, and out of place alike.

Your ‘4’…6 seconds auto evade, just…no. There should not even be a discussion about this. As long as you decide to stick with that, I will be having a hard time to take any of your points serious.

As nice as your executioner change sounds, it is obviuosly broken. Toughness/ Armor is in place to deny direct damage bursts like ours. Thieves should be focussing on weak targets instead of getting an ultimate anti-bunker trait. Protection is to be dealt with with a smart use of boonstrip, not with a passive ability.
Even if the changes were ok, you would not put them into a single, already powerful trait.
And remember this is not only pvp. Toughness scaling is also imporatnt for higher pve content.

I would have said smthng about unhindered combatant, but thankfully you have seen that yourself by now. Still…I get a ton of complaints now for spamming evades, no idea how it would be with that mechanic in place, especially with bonus effects on evades. Perhaps it would be more appropiate to increase the window of the dodge by 1/4 or so seconds. UC is already a really good pick right now tho.

Bound(ing dodger) This is meant to be an offensive trait, and also already a good one. No protection here. Thieves do not work with boons either, we prefer other methods.

Lotus training. 20% damage and condi reduction…..you really dont see a problem with that? With a straight 20% damage reduction, unremoveable, on every dodge? (besides all the other effects and the weakness)

Reveal. I have pretty recently been reminded, that reveal is a mechanic, designed to counter stealth gameplay on thieves. Why would you exclude a profession from a mechanic, that is aimed exclusively on that profession?

As the others said, this is called power creep. You just try to make this class better instead of fixing it or ‘making it viable’. You dont even try to promote underpowered mechanics, you are trying to take our strenghts and make make them even stronger, while taking our weaknesses, and removing them.
The best I could say is that you are trying to adress the symptoms without taking notice of the disease, and you are fixing a scratch at the arm by developing an entirely cybernetic prothetic bodypart with big guns in it. (maybe the metaphor is not entirely helpful here, but I hope you got my point)

Nope. Not at all. Again, this is just bring the class up with the rest of the pack. I don’t believe there is a power creep, I just think every class has multiple passives that are so OP. Such at Ele protection up time. Heck let’s change it so that Executioner only ignores protection when targets are below 75%. Is that really too much to ask for? Because as you know Thief is at the bottom of the food chain and will remain there. I mean you look at all these other classes and all the nice stuff they have and Thief….nothing remotely special at all. So maybe if you all weren’t so blinded and ignorant you’d realize thief is BAD regardless if you take away the so called “power creep”

How to make thief viable again: nerf revs and scrappers.

I really like the 15 ini baseline idea. That’s really cool. Also the blinding powder being F2 seems really neat. I’d like even more that if, depending on your specs, you get a different F2 skill. Better yet, let’s have three of them like a guardian, all depending on what specs you use.

Trickery – Steal
Shadow Arts – Blinding Powder
Dare Devil – ???? (something evade related)?
Acro – ???? (something to help sustain)?
Deadly Arts – Some kind of knife to throw would be neat.

Just throwing ideas out there. Feel free to recommend different options. I’m curious to hear what others think.

Shovel Face.4512:

Nope. Not at all. Again, this is just bring the class up with the rest of the pack. I don’t believe there is a power creep, I just think every class has multiple passives that are so OP. Such at Ele protection up time. Heck let’s change it so that Executioner only ignores protection when targets are below 75%. Is that really too much to ask for? Because as you know Thief is at the bottom of the food chain and will remain there. I mean you look at all these other classes and all the nice stuff they have and Thief….nothing remotely special at all. So maybe if you all weren’t so blinded and ignorant you’d realize thief is BAD regardless if you take away the so called “power creep”

I suppose you meant to say 25%. ^^
We are not ‘the bottom of the food chain’ We are far away from beeing top tier, but try talking to mesmers and warriors. You can still beat the vast majority of players out there, but only if you dont try to play a +1 thief. Is someone plays on equal skill level you will have a hard time, but people who are only a little worse wont stand a chance unless they are scrappers or guards. The little power gap between thieves and other professions that still exists is better to be closed by nerfing them instead of buffing us.

Your way of argumentation also proves my point.
They are op, we should be brought in line= power creep.
I dont like a certain aspect of a mechanic and would like it adjusted=buff
At the given moment we have two counters and three classes we counter, everything else is a leveled playing field, except that the thief is, in fact, required to work much harder for their victories and is very unforgiving.

Asrat.2645:

Shovel Face.4512:

Nope. Not at all. Again, this is just bring the class up with the rest of the pack. I don’t believe there is a power creep, I just think every class has multiple passives that are so OP. Such at Ele protection up time. Heck let’s change it so that Executioner only ignores protection when targets are below 75%. Is that really too much to ask for? Because as you know Thief is at the bottom of the food chain and will remain there. I mean you look at all these other classes and all the nice stuff they have and Thief….nothing remotely special at all. So maybe if you all weren’t so blinded and ignorant you’d realize thief is BAD regardless if you take away the so called “power creep”

I suppose you meant to say 25%. ^^
We are not ‘the bottom of the food chain’ We are far away from beeing top tier, but try talking to mesmers and warriors. You can still beat the vast majority of players out there, but only if you dont try to play a +1 thief. Is someone plays on equal skill level you will have a hard time, but people who are only a little worse wont stand a chance unless they are scrappers or guards. The little power gap between thieves and other professions that still exists is better to be closed by nerfing them instead of buffing us.

Your way of argumentation also proves my point.
They are op, we should be brought in line= power creep.
I dont like a certain aspect of a mechanic and would like it adjusted=buff
At the given moment we have two counters and three classes we counter, everything else is a leveled playing field, except that the thief is, in fact, required to work much harder for their victories and is very unforgiving.

Wow. Yeah I did go talk to Mesmers and Warriors and guess what? Warriors have a condi build that wrecks any build thief can put out. And Mesmer? Seriously? I’m guessing you didn’t know that class is considered top tier now right? Why don’t u do some research and look up their new meta build called Chronophantasma. Insane condi pressure and a class that counters us. Please tell me which classes we counter? Mesmer? Chronophantasma build counter thief hardcore. Necro? Yeah good luck fighting even an average necro who knows how to protect themselves from Thiefs burst attacks. Do some research and actually play some ranked before you talk to me buddy.

So go play your unranked where Thief is good, I guess, but when you wanna hop into the big boy leagues, don’t roll a thief because you are countered by everything.

We directly counter revenants, warriors and necros. Two of those are so overpowered they still have a chance, but I beat most of them. And I include ranked, tho maybe not the very highest tiers / pro league.
‘that wrecks everything thief can put out’ Sry but no. I have met those warriors, even some really good ones. The first one or two times they kittened me up, since i expected them to be free kills. After I figured out, what attacks i had to evade, they became prey again.
I do not see any mesmers in ranked. The ones that actually play are usually focussed on stunlocking/bursting the focused target in a teamfight. Thats really all I’ve seen them do. If you refer to metabattle ‘great’ builds, you would also find a thief.
I just want to make this clear: We certainly belong to the weaker classes, I aint arguing about that.
But we are neither the weakest class, nor are we completely unviable. A good thief can beat more than 50% of equally skilled opponents. That is a fact.
Thief is one of the best balanced classes right now. Our only problem is the opness of certain alternatives.

11) Nerf everything else. There. Thief is viable.

Thief is one of the best designed porfession at the moment. No bullkitten sustain, no passive invulns (except the one we got in Acro, but I hate it), high risk high reward: perfect. If overperforming professions get nerfed, we’re fine

I like the F1 and F2 abilities as they are. I wouldn’t mind an F3 that granted stealth till you initiate an attack or are revealed, broken upon entering a trap or AOE. Meaning better stealth uptime without a mechanic involved or waste of a skill slot. It would also make room for some improvement to the SA trait line.
Oh and have something like a 35-40 sec cooldown after breaking so it’s not spammable.

I’ll just list out my thoughts according to your list:
1) I can agree with this one just because we need more than 1 viable amulet for power builds and then it gives people who want to ge zerk for insane damage the option as a blade of grass won’t kill them
2) Also something I can agree with.
3) It’s not terribly unbalanced but maybe a bit unnecessary, idk. I’m impartial to that one
4) No, we don’t need anymore invulns in the game. Maybe you could make another block or something but outside of that this is a big nono.
5) NO, absolutely not. That alone would be the single most broken trait in the entire game. Maybe some sort of armor penetration would be cool but ignoring it entirely is completely OP. Honestly I like the trait the way it is now, it’s a damage boost for those who don’t need the utility from improv. There’s nothing wrong with the trait as it is so I personally would leave it alone.
6) This I agree with again, lots of the base cd’s for utility skills are way too high and this would go a long way to helping diversity within the class.
7) NO NO and NO. The dodges are already pretty much overperforming as it is and this would powercreep dd so hard that there would be 0 options for diversity on the class. Remember the goal is to tone down what’s too strong, not buff it all to high heaven.
8) I don’t think this is necessary. Steal is already on a really short cd when it’s buffed via trickery and SoH.
9) Again completely broken and full of powercreep. What would be much better would be the removal of stealth stripping via reveal and instead only allow it to be applied like sic em. So if the thief is in stealth you can’t take it away but if you catch him in the open you can reveal him.
10) I like cluster bomb the way it is. Maybe an aftercast decrease and a projectile speed increase would be able to be considered but outside of that the skill is fine the way it is.

Shinobi.3240:

1. 15k HP base, would be around 21k with Maruder.

O.K.

2. 15 initiative baseline and make Prepardness where initiative cost for all skills is decreased by 1. (Ex. BP would be 5 initiative not 6 with this trait.)

15 Ini baseline okay, rest not.

3. Add F2 blinding powder skill. Why does Thief not have this? I’m surprised this isn’t even in the game considering Theives are “master of stealth”

Could agree with that on a 60 sec. CD.

4. Replace blinding powder utility skill with “Evasion” – evade all attacks for 6s

Would make thieves way too strong. 6s to freely rampage … hell no

5. Deadly Arts: Executioner trait rework – all attacks ignore armor and protection from targets below 75%, damage is increased by 20% when target is below 25%

So you want to ignore 967/1118/1271 armor rating depending on the class and on top of that the reduction from protection + 20% increased dmg at 25% health. Sounds completely broken.

6. Significant CD reductions to certain thief utility skills (SR, Roll for Initiative, Haste, Etc)

You can reduce the cds already when you trait for it

7. Dash dodge – gain 2.5s of quickness for every dodge.

Quickness on thief is really strong with the buffed autoattacks. Would be broken.

Bound – gain 2.5s of protection for ever dodge.

So perma protection .. nope

Lotus training – give ur opponents 5s of weakness( 20% dmg and condi reduction)

You can have permanent weakness uptime on your target already when you trait DA and DD. No need for more.

8. Steal – CD decreased by 5s

Steal is already so strong with all the enhancements. Reducing the cd even more would be crazy.

9. Reveal does not work on Thieves

Counterplay

10. And finally, fix the cluster bomb. Why does that thing defy gravity?

Agree with that kind of … its nice to set up your burst .. clusterbomb .. switch weapons … blackpowder .. heartseeker … steal .. backstab … can make it hit all at once. Fixing the travel speed would ruin this combo.

As i see it you don´t aim to balance thief you want to make it broken. We have Revenant already as an example for overtuning. Thief maybe needs minor fixes but no buffs. The other overperforming proffessions need a nerf.

Best regards!

Shino!

This. I stopped reading at the ignore armor and protection part if a target is below 75% health lol. 30k+ backstabs would be dumb. Was hoping I’d see a comment like this to reassure myself the thief community isn’t crazy wanting free wins on everything.

Edit: Though I think I like Ario’s response a little better.

The only cooldown adjustment I could see being made to steal is removing the cooldown reduction on SoH and just making steal’s base CD lower such that it has a reasonable cooldown when not using Trickery as to promote using other trait lines/other traits in trickery. It absolutely should not be lower than it is now.

Ario.8964:

I’ll just list out my thoughts according to your list:
1) I can agree with this one just because we need more than 1 viable amulet for power builds and then it gives people who want to ge zerk for insane damage the option as a blade of grass won’t kill them
2) Also something I can agree with.
3) It’s not terribly unbalanced but maybe a bit unnecessary, idk. I’m impartial to that one
4) No, we don’t need anymore invulns in the game. Maybe you could make another block or something but outside of that this is a big nono.
5) NO, absolutely not. That alone would be the single most broken trait in the entire game. Maybe some sort of armor penetration would be cool but ignoring it entirely is completely OP. Honestly I like the trait the way it is now, it’s a damage boost for those who don’t need the utility from improv. There’s nothing wrong with the trait as it is so I personally would leave it alone.
6) This I agree with again, lots of the base cd’s for utility skills are way too high and this would go a long way to helping diversity within the class.
7) NO NO and NO. The dodges are already pretty much overperforming as it is and this would powercreep dd so hard that there would be 0 options for diversity on the class. Remember the goal is to tone down what’s too strong, not buff it all to high heaven.
8) I don’t think this is necessary. Steal is already on a really short cd when it’s buffed via trickery and SoH.
9) Again completely broken and full of powercreep. What would be much better would be the removal of stealth stripping via reveal and instead only allow it to be applied like sic em. So if the thief is in stealth you can’t take it away but if you catch him in the open you can reveal him.
10) I like cluster bomb the way it is. Maybe an aftercast decrease and a projectile speed increase would be able to be considered but outside of that the skill is fine the way it is.

Just wanted to comment on point 8 since I’ve seen it several places. I think we could knock steal down by simply making the SoH CD reduction baseline. The only reason why is untraited steal is mediocre, so making the untraited version slightly better while not increasing the overall potential would help lessen the disparity between the traited and untraited version. Making that CD reduction and preparedness baseline would go a long way towards making trickery not (as) mandatory.

On the subject of untraited steal, what traits could be made baseline so we didn’t have to trait the kitten out of steal? Cause Maugetarr I’m thinking very similar to you on this, it’d be great to lessen the disparity between the two so untraited is still functional but not as powerful as a currently fully traited steal.

Here’s how I’d fix steal and Trickery dependencies:

- Preparedness made baseline
- Base steal CD reduced to 25s
- Removal of steal cooldown reduction from SoH
- Lead Attacks giving a 20% cooldown reduction to steal instead of 15% -> 20s CD from 25s
- Crit Strikes’ Unrelenting Strikes gives 5s Fury on steal and 5s Fury when hitting a target below 90%, 10s ICD.
- Trickster removes two conditions

Preparedness baseline does scare me, though. While I advocated for Kleptomaniac instead in the past, and still believe it might be a good-enough offer, some initiative costs are too high, and others are too low. The baseline initiative increase could allow for some better-balancing of initiative costs so that balancing doesn’t need to be done with such an important and wildly-swinging variable. The change to give CS better fury access also follows logically as to remove dependencies on ToTC for crit builds to get their damage when they need it and promote more CS-oriented builds.

Trickster just needs a little bit up an up, as if we contemplate similar options, such as Wilderness Knowledge on the ranger, and compare how useful tricks are to survival skills, as well as their cooldowns, I think it’s safe to say this wouldn’t break anything, particularly since ranger base HP is better-suited to dealing with conditions, Healing Spring and Unguent are amazing anti-condi heals, and Druid CA form gives a lot of anti-condi bonuses as well. One trait to reward trick usage more and make core thief healing competitive with DD heals (traited withdraw vs CV + EA/UC applying three times) seems pretty reasonable, and better-defines Trickery as a counter-play trait line (interrupts, boon hate, condi cleanse buffs) rather than a grab-bag of everything needed to make the thief function.

i love extra boons on dodge idea! +1 would love to get proteciton on dodge

DeceiverX.8361:

Shinobi.3240:

1. 15k HP base, would be around 21k with Maruder.

O.K.

2. 15 initiative baseline and make Prepardness where initiative cost for all skills is decreased by 1. (Ex. BP would be 5 initiative not 6 with this trait.)

15 Ini baseline okay, rest not.

3. Add F2 blinding powder skill. Why does Thief not have this? I’m surprised this isn’t even in the game considering Theives are “master of stealth”

Could agree with that on a 60 sec. CD.

4. Replace blinding powder utility skill with “Evasion” – evade all attacks for 6s

Would make thieves way too strong. 6s to freely rampage … hell no

5. Deadly Arts: Executioner trait rework – all attacks ignore armor and protection from targets below 75%, damage is increased by 20% when target is below 25%

So you want to ignore 967/1118/1271 armor rating depending on the class and on top of that the reduction from protection + 20% increased dmg at 25% health. Sounds completely broken.

6. Significant CD reductions to certain thief utility skills (SR, Roll for Initiative, Haste, Etc)

You can reduce the cds already when you trait for it

7. Dash dodge – gain 2.5s of quickness for every dodge.

Quickness on thief is really strong with the buffed autoattacks. Would be broken.

Bound – gain 2.5s of protection for ever dodge.

So perma protection .. nope

Lotus training – give ur opponents 5s of weakness( 20% dmg and condi reduction)

You can have permanent weakness uptime on your target already when you trait DA and DD. No need for more.

8. Steal – CD decreased by 5s

Steal is already so strong with all the enhancements. Reducing the cd even more would be crazy.

9. Reveal does not work on Thieves

Counterplay

10. And finally, fix the cluster bomb. Why does that thing defy gravity?

Agree with that kind of … its nice to set up your burst .. clusterbomb .. switch weapons … blackpowder .. heartseeker … steal .. backstab … can make it hit all at once. Fixing the travel speed would ruin this combo.

As i see it you don´t aim to balance thief you want to make it broken. We have Revenant already as an example for overtuning. Thief maybe needs minor fixes but no buffs. The other overperforming proffessions need a nerf.

Best regards!

Shino!

This. I stopped reading at the ignore armor and protection part if a target is below 75% health lol. 30k+ backstabs would be dumb. Was hoping I’d see a comment like this to reassure myself the thief community isn’t crazy wanting free wins on everything.

Edit: Though I think I like Ario’s response a little better.

The only cooldown adjustment I could see being made to steal is removing the cooldown reduction on SoH and just making steal’s base CD lower such that it has a reasonable cooldown when not using Trickery as to promote using other trait lines/other traits in trickery. It absolutely should not be lower than it is now.

30k backstabs? Huh? What amulet are u running? LOL If you didn’t know, Thief backstab damage is ridiculously low for the amount of effort to pull it off. In the current Meta, backstab only does around 3k dmg and that with it be a crit. Reason why is because of the protection up time every class has arm. I guess I did go over board on the Executioner rework so instead I’d like to see something where Inly the skill backstab ignores armor and protection. I think that would help us out a lot.

highest you can pull off in Spvp is 19.5k backstab 23.5k vault only factoring thief dmg.

Shovel Face.4512:

DeceiverX.8361:

Shinobi.3240:

1. 15k HP base, would be around 21k with Maruder.

O.K.

2. 15 initiative baseline and make Prepardness where initiative cost for all skills is decreased by 1. (Ex. BP would be 5 initiative not 6 with this trait.)

15 Ini baseline okay, rest not.

3. Add F2 blinding powder skill. Why does Thief not have this? I’m surprised this isn’t even in the game considering Theives are “master of stealth”

Could agree with that on a 60 sec. CD.

4. Replace blinding powder utility skill with “Evasion” – evade all attacks for 6s

Would make thieves way too strong. 6s to freely rampage … hell no

5. Deadly Arts: Executioner trait rework – all attacks ignore armor and protection from targets below 75%, damage is increased by 20% when target is below 25%

So you want to ignore 967/1118/1271 armor rating depending on the class and on top of that the reduction from protection + 20% increased dmg at 25% health. Sounds completely broken.

6. Significant CD reductions to certain thief utility skills (SR, Roll for Initiative, Haste, Etc)

You can reduce the cds already when you trait for it

7. Dash dodge – gain 2.5s of quickness for every dodge.

Quickness on thief is really strong with the buffed autoattacks. Would be broken.

Bound – gain 2.5s of protection for ever dodge.

So perma protection .. nope

Lotus training – give ur opponents 5s of weakness( 20% dmg and condi reduction)

You can have permanent weakness uptime on your target already when you trait DA and DD. No need for more.

8. Steal – CD decreased by 5s

Steal is already so strong with all the enhancements. Reducing the cd even more would be crazy.

9. Reveal does not work on Thieves

Counterplay

10. And finally, fix the cluster bomb. Why does that thing defy gravity?

Agree with that kind of … its nice to set up your burst .. clusterbomb .. switch weapons … blackpowder .. heartseeker … steal .. backstab … can make it hit all at once. Fixing the travel speed would ruin this combo.

As i see it you don´t aim to balance thief you want to make it broken. We have Revenant already as an example for overtuning. Thief maybe needs minor fixes but no buffs. The other overperforming proffessions need a nerf.

Best regards!

Shino!

This. I stopped reading at the ignore armor and protection part if a target is below 75% health lol. 30k+ backstabs would be dumb. Was hoping I’d see a comment like this to reassure myself the thief community isn’t crazy wanting free wins on everything.

Edit: Though I think I like Ario’s response a little better.

The only cooldown adjustment I could see being made to steal is removing the cooldown reduction on SoH and just making steal’s base CD lower such that it has a reasonable cooldown when not using Trickery as to promote using other trait lines/other traits in trickery. It absolutely should not be lower than it is now.

30k backstabs? Huh? What amulet are u running? LOL If you didn’t know, Thief backstab damage is ridiculously low for the amount of effort to pull it off. In the current Meta, backstab only does around 3k dmg and that with it be a crit. Reason why is because of the protection up time every class has arm. I guess I did go over board on the Executioner rework so instead I’d like to see something where Inly the skill backstab ignores armor and protection. I think that would help us out a lot.

Armor penetration would double or more the damage. I was also speaking from a WvW perspective, mostly, where people already complain about it, particularly mine

Shovel Face.4512:

Do some research and actually play some ranked before you talk to me buddy.

So go play your unranked where Thief is good, I guess, but when you wanna hop into the big boy leagues, don’t roll a thief because you are countered by everything.

Those argumentation skills…
Trump, is that you? Secretly playing Gw2? Really sounds like you.

Please, use better argumentation than personal insults if you want people to actually take you seriously. Also, using caps does not make your point more clear nor does it help your argument, just makes you look like a person who thinks screaming is an effective way of defending your point.

On the balancing ideas, two points.

First, the whole thing is centered around PvP. PvP is only a third of the game. Have you thought your ideas through for PvE and WvW? How would it affect high level fractals and raids for example? There is no mention of group support and that is what we really need.

Second, most of this stuff seems overpowered (6 sec evade skill, really?) and aimed at thieves who have a dagger in their main hand. From reading your responses, most of that also revolved around backstabs. Dont try to pigeonhole all thieves into playing Dagger/X builds.

Also, if you think other classes are so OP then why not play them instead? Its not like sPvP restricts you to the character you poured countless hours into like PvE does.

I think the problem with rolling some skills or traits into baseline is that the professions are meant to represent many different archetypes. I could be wrong but I think the thief is supposed to cover the “pirate” archetype as well. If you roll blinding powder into baseline it wouldn’t really be a pirate anymore and instead would be pigeonholed into “ninja.” I think it is more about what is thematically appropriate than what is balanced. I would personally like blinding powder on f2 for the way that I have developed and conceptualized my thief.

dlmoore.7293:

I think the problem with rolling some skills or traits into baseline is that the professions are meant to represent many different archetypes. I could be wrong but I think the thief is supposed to cover the “pirate” archetype as well. If you roll blinding powder into baseline it wouldn’t really be a pirate anymore and instead would be pigeonholed into “ninja.” I think it is more about what is thematically appropriate than what is balanced. I would personally like blinding powder on f2 for the way that I have developed and conceptualized my thief.

And the question is: does that really make sense? We can already “permastealth” if we want to – only thing hindering us is the self inflicted reveal – when exactly do you want to button smash stealth yourself – you don’t need it (if you’re not an OH dagger (miss miss miss miss) or staff thief – but for that the utility as it is is usually enough). You would need the blind though but I have been called stupid over several posts because I associated Blinding Powder with blind

Jana.6831:

dlmoore.7293:

I think the problem with rolling some skills or traits into baseline is that the professions are meant to represent many different archetypes. I could be wrong but I think the thief is supposed to cover the “pirate” archetype as well. If you roll blinding powder into baseline it wouldn’t really be a pirate anymore and instead would be pigeonholed into “ninja.” I think it is more about what is thematically appropriate than what is balanced. I would personally like blinding powder on f2 for the way that I have developed and conceptualized my thief.

And the question is: does that really make sense? We can already “permastealth” if we want to – only thing hindering us is the self inflicted reveal – when exactly do you want to button smash stealth yourself – you don’t need it (if you’re not an OH dagger (miss miss miss miss) or staff thief – but for that the utility as it is is usually enough). You would need the blind though but I have been called stupid over several posts because I associated Blinding Powder with blind

This is kind of what I was getting at. Even though stealth has a unique interaction with thieves (with the stealth 1 skills), I think it would go against Anet’s design for how professions function. If you want to stealth a lot, you can do that. If you want a build that doesn’t incorporate much stealth, you can do that too! I’m just going to ignore the blind part of the skill for this discussion :P.

Edit: It’s also a blast finisher too! So there are a number of potential balance issues but these could be resolved. Because of this, I am primarily focused on what it would mean from a design perspective

These kinds of suggestions are probably why Anet never reads Thief forums lmao

Not sure if joking or srs. My thoughts on you ideas.

1: 15k hp base? No thanks, thief would be in Un killable with marurder stats. With my pve/wvw gear I am sitting happerly at 16k health.

2: I would agree on the +3 iniative but not the reduction on skills.

3: why do we need a 5th utility skill?

4: thief is an active class, if you want passive play scrapper or some hint.

5: …. why not just nuke them while you’re at it. Dagger aa is already buffed through the roof, with this Change you might as well remove the other 4 weapon skills.

6: would like this too, sr back to 45 seconds would be nice but then again it would just get revealed anyway. Rof and haist are stun breakers so you need to be careful how the cd is adjusted, especially with trickster trait.

7: the new dodge traits are close to op already. In fact I predict a nerf to dash. I don’t understand why quickness activates on a dodge. As for protection on bound? That is so out of character for that dodge. Was deuling a d/p theif and his bound hit me for 4.5k alone.

8: that’s what slight of hand is for.

9: …

10: you can out run this skill lol. I don’t think it is meant for long range even though it is 900 range. Choking gas and disabling shot could do with some love.

Is it our fourth year of none viable? i lost track.

Only things I can suggest without getting into controversial weapon skill changes are:

0.) Preparedness baseline. I once thought Kleptomaniac might be a better choice for preserving balance, but doing some further analysis led me to believe this change is both the easiest one to manage while keeping weapon skills balanced and balance between builds including trickery or not. We should be trying to demote spammy play and promote skillful execution of skills. Slightly upping the max pool helps with this so long as initiative regeneration isn’t buffed and some skills like Shadow Shot and vault see slight increases in initiative costs (1/2).

1.) To reduce the base cooldown of steal to 25s, remove the reduction on SoH, and put the 20% reduction on Lead Attacks to make traited trickery keep a 20s CD on steal while an un-traited Trickery have a 25s cooldown. 20% CDR for a trait line isn’t at all unheard of, as that’s what most weapon skills get. This helps push Trickery away from being mandatory.

2.) Give Unrelenting Strikes 10s of Fury when activating steal and remove the 90% health part. This reduces dependency on ToTC a little bit by keeping its functionality and nets a slight buff to non-NQ builds, while preserving the same proportion of fury uptime it has now, but allowing for more extended use, up to, if traited for Trickery, potentially permanent fury without NQ, or slightly improved uptime via traiting Lead Attacks.

3.) Give Hidden Killer a little love by removing one condition when becoming revealed. This makes CS a much more competitive trait choice.

4.) Exchange Bountiful Theft and Flanking Strikes in the Trickery line for a bit more build diversity potential (BT/Trickster/SoH as a lockdown/trickery setup vs ToTC/FS/QP as a pure DPS setup), also letting CS become optional for some builds by letting a maxed/traited Trickery line yield permanent fury via ToTC and FS combined.

5.) Buff Swindler’s Equilibrium in Acrobatics to not be so dreadfully bad. Its best possible results are like a 2s cooldown reduction. Bump it to 1s per evade with a sword instead of 1% recharge performed. It already does this. Reduce ICD to .5 seconds or have it only proc at most once per evade.

Acrobatics is hard to designate a rework for because the traits themselves feel very low-impact but holistically have ridiculous synergy with Daredevil. Shadow Arts is in a similar position as well, and I can only foresee a small damage bonus being allotted to it (+5-7%) if any at all to keep it balanced. Picking a trait to remove or change substantially here is likely more effort than ANet would ever want to put in, and Daredevil makes this a conceptual-balance nightmare.

All of these changes are way over the top.
The viability of many classes is contingent upon the revenant and its power level.

Changes need to be done to revenant before you change other classes/

The OP lose all his credibility when he say “mesmer are actually top tier”, you might be stuck in the S1.

Pretty sure me and other 3/4 mesmer in the entire game are still playing GW2 with a main mesmer char.

But yeah, the 6 second of auto evade, so balanced… How someone can just even think about that?
The actually top tier profession are Necro/Scrapper/Thief. Mesmer are pretty much dead in every single game mode.