No way should traps pulse. Trapper runes are already crazy strong for stealth access and damage on traps, and needle trap is very high-impact from its immobilize and low cooldown. Traps should be made circles rather than lines, however.
Scorpion Wire just needs its pathing fixed. It’s already extremely strong when it lands and has a very short cooldown. The problem is it never lands.
Reflexive strike is just weird. All retaliating blocks work like this, though, so I’m not certain adjusting for just the thief is reasonable. The auto-suicide is kinda frustrating. Honestly I find this skill’s best use for projectile deflection. I think it’d be better if it just did this and got re-named to “Snatch Arrows” or something, so that the thief didn’t get locked into an animation from a stray melee AOE. Just my opinion, though.
Withdraw could probably face a cooldown reduction and I don’t think people would care that much. The healing isn’t substantial and a slight cooldown reduction (to 15s as it was would potentially make people re-consider Trickster, though. Bountiful theft is very strong, but so is Trickster’ed Withdraw. I could see this happening, but I’m not really sure if it’s necessary or if more evasion uptime is the answer.
HiS should just cleanse Confusion and Torment as well. Before torment was added to the game, it was meant to cleanse all DoT conditions. Since Confusion also now DoT’s, I’d lump it in that category as well. Then it has some really good use, and the cooldown is justified, as it also heals, stealths, and applies regen.
Upping the HP coefficient on SoM seems completely reasonable.
DA needs many changes for venom/condi builds to be better. Death Blossom spam is frustrating to play against and very easy to play. I’d rather see the skill cap raised on D/D condi and have better synergy with poison to make the build more devastating rather than an annoyance built on spamming 3. DT should apply poison on only Autos but at 100% chance, move bleed on DB to Dancing Dagger, make DB’s evade more mobile. D/D power becomes better through mobility and a stronger evade on DB, and D/D condi gets potential damage bumps from much better poison stacking and a skill cap increase because it needs to then be vulnerable to attacks, but is still then also kitted with an evade to deal with it.
Crit Strikes needs a LOT more help for viability. Cleanses would probably be a good place to start – such as putting a cleanse on HK to make the trait worth taking over NQ when building damage and be competitive on sustain against IP. It also lets the thief get some better options for cleansing overall than feeling forced into running DD or SA.
Actually, the CiS/RoS swap is a pretty neat idea. Might leave for some room for improvement on SA, but I’m uncertain. Venoms could/should probably just be consolidated and buffed. Otherwise, SA is in a good spot as it is. Lots of defensive utility, but nothing screaming OP. SA and DD combined make for a ton of condition cleanses, so I don’t think there’s really much needed here or potential to improve.
Acro… should honestly just be deleted so that the evasion style doesn’t compete with Daredevil. They can’t be strong individually otherwise they’ll be OP combined, and they can’t be strong combined because then they’re weak individually. This shouldn’t have gone past the developers when conceptualizing DD to begin with, which is sad.
Trickery needs some abilities like Preparedness made baseline, 10s Fury uptime on steal should be put into CS replacing Unrelenting Strikes such that ToTC is also replaceable. This synergizes better with NQ since it’ll be permanent in combat via critting, anyways, or just help HK builds deal more reliable damage post-burst, and help IP builds sustain better for longer after engaging.
DD needs some damage toned down. Bounding Dodge + Staff Master + HM provides close to the best damage modifiers in the game for a trait line, on top of all of the extra utility and durability the DD has innately. Change Escapist’s Absolution to have no ICD but only work on a dodge rather than just evades, so that the skill cap increases but dodge potency itself raises dramatically on a per-use basis.
Weapons:
Shortbow is fine, if not too good relative to the other weapons. Better condition application on daggers via the DT change would keep this as a utility weapon with a fair degree of balance.
Can’t put a smoke field on staff. Vault/Bound through Dust Strike would just replace BP + HS on D/P and provide better damage and stealth. Vault damage should come down by around 10%. Right now it’s absurd and contributing to the “needlessly high damage skills on elite specializations ruining PvP balance” effect with HoT.
CnD really just needs better reliability. There are so many blocks and invulns right now that it never lands and feels like a waste of initiative. I fear making it unblockable might be too much for some builds such as Guardians who depend on blocks and aegis, but making it penetrate invulns would just be way too strong, which is where the real issue lies.
Armor pierce baseline on backstab would be ridiculous. The issue with the skill these days isn’t the damage but the fact there are so many invulns and blocks you just don’t land it at all, which is why D/D is so functionally poor; you get blocked/invulned out of CnD, and then when it finally lands and you’re stealthed, your opponent is back to being invuln or blocking. I think with all the power creep we’re seeing and overpowered burst skills added in HoT people are forgetting on what damage should be considered reasonable. If we were to get armor piercing, put it on a utility skill or something for a few attacks or a short duration, just so there’s some sense of commitment to perform that kind of burst.
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