ok so being a thief is awesome you get the idea of stealth and being able to jump onto an opponent but sadly the stealth or rather how stealth works is not implemented properly now before i continue i love the game there are a few balance problems blah blah blah but the thief stealth is the main thing iv seen people complain about im a level 40 something thief and i can allready tell the stealth is broken i can stealth for a insanly long amount of time and i can do it anytime i choose to even in a fight or when taking damage and so on i believe if the stealth changed more towards WoW it would work better so you change stealth so it permanent then make it that you cant goo into stealth during combat and so that when damaged you come out of stealth but make sure there is 1 ability thieves can use to go into stealth during combat for either a nice extra damage attack or to just run away yet have like a grace period of a few seconds so your not instantly popped back out of stealth now having this ability wouldnt change the game much as is allready because so far at lvl 40 something i can enter combat or leave when ever i want there is nothing to stop me but hard CC which i only have happen to me in wvw which isnt even that common then then change the extra stealth abilities we have now so that way they dont stealth you they just add a tad more survival the thief is a wonder class but very soft like extremely soft the light armour professions are better at surviving then i am even when they are a lower level the only thing i can do is hope i dont die while stealthing which brings me to idk if this is a bug or what but when stealthed if you get hit by say a warrior the warrior sees numbers pop up and can just blindly swing away and follow your stealthed moves which is horrible that on its own ruins the ability to stealth from what my view on stealth should be is either a way to start a fight for a squishy char or a way to escape combat not both not neither its one or the other but because of these numbers popping up my only hope is they dont hit me with a blind swing inside of my AOE STEALTH that i have to stay inside of for the full duration or i get nocked out of stealth which is just death right there on the spot
as for poisons and traps i see no point to them they offer nothing use full everyone has some way to remove the poisons/venoms and the traps offer no support even at my low level they are completly useless for fighting random monsters they do no dmg or very little and are not able to assist me at all the only good one might be the one (i forget the name) that summons a theif to assist when triggered but that is still a bad trap is has a small range and pretty much requires someone steps on it on purpose not to mention the thief it summons is weak and easly killed from aoe
the elite skills need some work the only one people ever use is dagger storm the one that summons the thieves is almost never used except by lower levels that didnt have enough skill points to just get dagger storm (btw sorry is name is wrong or i forget name) the racial ones are useless i havnt even seen someone use those as a thief anyhow and the basilisk venom is stupid its hardly a second long stun which can be broken by any other profession and only random monsters is it usefull against but even then i could just summon 2 thieves to help me fight instead of using a crappy venom
now i may be wrong on a few parts but these issues do need to be looked at about the thief i do enjoy playing as a thief but these few issues are making it worse and worse to play the higher level i get yes i can do pure damage builds and do a crap ton of damage but thats not how a thief should work a thief is similar to a rogue and should either use daggers to stab something in the back or use poisons/traps to whittle a things health away not allmost or in some cases 1 shot something thats just plain broken, thank you for taking the time to read my opinions